THE  GIFT  OF 

MAY  TREAT  MORRISON 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

ALEXANDER  F  MORRISON 


SCRIBNER'S 


THE   UNITED  STATES 


.sv 
A    -5 

4\  y 


PUBLISHERS'   INTRODUCTION. 
* 

^  THE  plan  of  the  Popular  History  of  the  United  States,  now  finally 

o.  completed,  was  laid  before  Mr.  William  Cullen  Bryant  in  1874,  and 
\  actual  work  was  begun  in  the  following  year.  It  was  Mr.  Bryant's 
t^  ambition  and  the  purpose  of  the  publishers  to  produce  not  only  the 
^  best  but  the  most  comprehensive  history  of  the  country  that  had  been 
C^  or  could  be  written  in  a  popular  form. 

Under  the  supervision  and  leadership  of  Mr.  Bryant,  Mr.  Sydney 
Howard  Gay,  long  Mr.  Bryant's  chief  assistant  in  the  editorial  man 
agement  of  the  "  Evening  Post,"  was  selected  as  the  best  equipped 
of  all  known  to  him  to  undertake  the  actual  writing  of  such  a  work. 
Mr.  Bryant's  editorial  supervision   was  to  be  constant   and    active 
throughout  the  entire  preparation  of  the  history,  and  the   clear  and 
vigorous  Preface  which   he  wrote  (still   retained   in   the  completed 
^      work)  laid  down  the  lines  of  what  he  had  in  mind.     In  fact,  how 
ever,  he  was  able  to  read  the  proofs  only  of  the  first  and  second 
\i      volumes  before  his  death.     Mr.  Gay  carried  on  the  work  to  the  com- 
^      pletion   of  the   original  scheme.     He  had  several  assistants   in   the 
\x>     collection  and  preparation  of  material,  and  one  important  contributor 
N     in  the  Rev.  Edward  Everett  Hale,  who  wrote  the  chapters  in   the 
x       second  volume  upon  the  Spanish  Colonization  in  the  Southwest. 

^^     Because  of  the  very  nearness  of  the  Civil  War  and  its  consequences 
HA    to  the  time  at  which  the  history  was  begun,  much  less  space  was 
•  y^accorded  to  the  latter  half  of  this  century  than   its  importance  now 
^b   calls  for.     Since  the  rise  of  the  great  literature  concerning  the  Civil 
War,  it  has  been  possible  to  give  to  that  passage  of  the  great  narra 
tive  a  scale  equal  to  that  of  the  rest,  and  to  take  advantage  of  the 
invaluable  material  ungathered  or  uncodified  at  the  time  when  Mr. 
Gay  ended  his  work.     Finally,  as  it  has  become   evident  that  the 


42747J 


viii  PUBLISHP:RS'  INTRODUCTION. 

quarter-century  following  the  war  is  also  to  rank  as  one  of  the  most 
momentous,  —  perhaps  materially  the  most  momentous  of  our  history, 

it  has  been  felt  that  no  book  can  now  fulfil  what  this  originally 

aimed  to  do  without  bringing  the  narrative  to  a  very  much  later  time 
than  was  at  first  thought  of. 

It  was  therefore  decided  a  year  or  two  ago  by  the  publishers  to 
remake  the  History  beyond  the  chapters  in  the  fourth  volume 
which  treat  of  the  beginning  of  the  war,  and  to  confide  the  work 
of  completing  the  book  from  that  time  to  the  present,  and  upon  a 
greatly  enlarged  scale,  to  Mr.  Noah  Brooks,  whose  qualifications  for 
such  an  undertaking  need  no  attestation.  The  plan  adopted,  besides 
the  rewriting  of  a  portion  of  the  fourth  volume,  has  involved  the 
addition  of  a  fifth,  and  the  narrative  is  now  continued  down  to  within 
a  year  or  two  of  the  actual  present  with  a  fulness  not  attempted,  it 
is  believed,  in  any  other  history  of  the  same  comprehensive  scope. 

A  feature  of  the  history  to  which  from  the  beginning  great  care 
and  expenditure  have  been  devoted  is  its  illustration,  with  which  the 
greatest  pains  have  been  taken,  not  only  as  to  historical  accuracy  but 
as  to  the  quality  of  its  art.  The  illustrators  of  the  original  history 
were  the  best  men  of  the  day,  and  the  same  standard  is  followed  in 
the  new  portion,  with  the  additional  advantage  of  the  improved  pro 
cesses  for  reproduction  and  perfected  printing.  The  complete  work 
contains  over  1600  illustrations,  which  represent  practically  every 
illustrator  who  has  been  favorably  known  for  the  last  twenty  years. 


PREFACE. 


THERE  are  several  excellent  histories  of  the  United  States 
of  North  America  in  print,  and  it  will  naturally  be  asked 
what  occasion  there  is  for  another. 

The  title  of  this  work  is  in  part  an  answer  to  the  question. 
It  is  intended  to  be  a  popular  history  —  a  work  for  that  large 
class  who  have  not  leisure  for  reading  those  narratives  which 
aim  at  setting  forth,  with  the  greatest  breadth  and  variety  of 
circumstance,  the  annals  of  our  nation's  life.  At  the  same 
time  it  is  the  design  of  the  present  work  to  treat  the  subject 
more  at  large  than  is  done  in  those  compends,  some  of  them 
able  in  their  way,  which  are  used  as  text-books  in  the  schools. 
Unlike  these  latter,  it  is  not  a  compilation  from  histories 
already  written,  but  in  its  narrative  of  events  and  its  repre 
sentation  of  the  state  of  our  country  at  different  epochs,  has 
derived  its  materials  through  independent  research  from  orig 
inal  sources.  It  is  also  within  the  plan  of  this  work  to  rely  in 
part  for  its  attraction  on  the  designs  with  which  it  is  illus 
trated  —  likenesses  of  men  conspicuous  in  our  annals,  views 
of  places  and  buildings  memorable  in  our  history,  and  repre 
sentations  of  usages  and  manners  which  have  had  their  day 
and  have  passed  away. 

But  in  saying  this,  we  state  but  a  small  part  of  our  plan. 
It  is  our  purpose  to  present  within  a  moderate  compass  a 
view  of  changes,  political  and  social,  occurring  within  our 
Republic,  which  have  an  interest  for  every  nation  in  the  civil 
ized  world,  and  the  history  of  which  could  not  be  fully  written 
until  now.  In  the  two  centuries  and  a  half  of  our  existence 
as  an  off-shoot  of  the  great  European  stock,  a  mighty  drama 
has  been  put  upon  the  stage  of  our  continent,  which,  after  a 


x  PREFACE. 

series  of  fierce  contentions  and  subtle  intrigues,  closed  in  a 
bloody  catastrophe  with  a  result  favorable  to  liberty  and 
human  rights  and  to  the  fair  fame  of  the  Republic.  Within 
that  time  the  institution  of  slavery,  springing  up  from  small 
and  almost  unnoticed  beginnings,  grew  to  be  a  gigantic  power 
claiming  and  exercising  dominion  over  the  confederacy,  and 
at  last,  when  it  failed  in  causing  itself  to  be  recognized  as  a 
national  institution  and  saw  the  signs  of  a  decline  in  its  polit 
ical  supremacy,  declaring  the  Union  of  the  States  dissolved, 
encountering  the  free  States  in  a  sanguinary  five  years'  war, 
and  bringing  upon  itself  overthrow  and  utter  destruction. 

We  stand,  therefore,  at  a  point  in  our  annals  where  the 
whole  duration  of  slavery  in  our  country,  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end,  lies  before  us  as  on  a  chart ;  and  certainly  no  his 
tory  of  our  Republic  can  now  be  regarded  as  complete  which 
should  fail  to  carry  the  reader  through  the  various  stages  of 
its  existence,  from  its  silent  and  stealthy  origin  to  the  stormy 
period  in  which  the  world  saw  its  death-struggle,  and  recog 
nized  in  its  fall  the  sentence  of  eternal  justice.  It  is  instruc 
tive  to  observe  how  in  its  earlier  years  slavery  was  admitted, 
by  the  most  eminent  men  of  those  parts  of  the  country 
where  it  had  taken  the  deepest  root,  to  be  a  great  wrong ; 
and  how  afterward,  when  the  power  and  influence  of  the 
slave-holding  class  were  at  their  height,  it  was  boldly  de 
fended  as  a  beneficent  and  just  institution,  the  basis  of  the 
most  perfect  social  state  known  to  the  world,  —  so  powerfully 
and  surely  do  personal  interests  pervert  the  moral  judgments 
of  mankind.  The  controversy  assumed  a  deeper  interest  as 
the  years  went  on.  On  the  side  of  slavery  stood  forth  men 
singularly  fitted  to  be  its  champions;  able,  plausible,  trained 
to  public  life,  men  of  large  personal  influence  and  a  fierce 
determination  of  will  nourished  by  the  despotism  exercised 
on  their  plantations  over  their  bondmen.  On  the  other  side 
was  a  class  equally  able  and  no  less  determined,  enthusiasts 
for  liberty  as  courageous  as  their  adversaries  were  imperious, 
restlessly  aggressive,  ready  to  become  martyrs,  and  from  time 
to  time  attesting  their  sincerity  by  yielding  up  their  lives. 
So  fierce  was  the  quarrel,  and  so  general  was  the  inclination 


PREFACE.  xi 

even  in  the  free  States  to  take  part  with  the  slave-owners, 
that  the  name  of  Abolitionist  was  used  as  a  term  of  reproach 
and  scorn  ;  and  to  point  out  a  man  as  worthy  of  wearing  it, 
was  in  some  places  the  same  thing  as  to  recommend  him  to 
the  attentions  of  the  mob.  Yet  even  while  this  was  a  name 
of  opprobrium,  the  hostility  to  slavery  was  gathering  strength 
under  a  new  form.  The  friends  of  slavery  demanded  that 
the  authority  of  the  master  over  his  bondman  should  be  rec 
ognized  in  all  the  territory  belonging  to  the  Union  not  yet 
formed  into  States,  —  in  short,  that  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
Republic,  wherever  established,  should  carry  with  it  the  law 
of  slavery.  A  party  was  immediately  formed  to  resist  the 
application  of  this  doctrine,  and  after  a  long  and  vehement 
contest  elected  its  candidate  President  of  the  United  States. 
Meantime  the  rapid  settlement  of  our  Pacific  coast  by  a 
purely  free  population,  in  consequence  of  the  opening  of  the 
gold  mines,  showed  the  friends  of  slavery  that  they  were  to 
be  hereafter  in  a  minority,  the  power  of  which  would  dimin 
ish  with  every  successive  year.  They  instantly  took  the  res 
olution  to  revolt  against  the  Union,  declared  it  thenceforth 
dissolved,  and  rushed  into  a  war,  in  which  their  defeat  carried 
with  it  the  fall  of  slavery.  It  fell,  dragging  down  with  it 
thousands  of  private  fortunes,  and  leaving  some  of  the  fair 
est  portions  of  the  region  whence  it  issued  its  decrees  ravaged 
and  desolate,  and  others,  for  a  time,  given  over  to  a  confusion 
little  short  of  anarchy. 

Writers  who  record  the  fortunes  of  nations  have  most  gen 
erally  and  wisely  stopped  at  a  modest  distance  from  the  time 
in  which  they  wrote,  for  this  reason  among  others,  that  the 
narrative  could  not  be  given  with  the  necessary  degree  of 
impartiality,  on  account  of  controversies  not  yet  ended,  and 
prejudices  which  have  not  had  time  to  subside.  But  in  the 
case  of  American  slavery  the  difficulty  of  speaking  impar 
tially  both  of  the  events  which  form  its  history  and  of  the 
characters  of  its  champions  and  adversaries,  is  far  less  now 
than  it  ever  was  before.  Slavery  has  become  a  thing  of  the 
past ;  the  dispute  as  to  its  rights  under  our  Constitution  is 
closed  forever.  The  class  of  active  and  vigilant  politicians 


xii  PREFACE. 

who,  a  few  years  since,  were  ever  on  the  watch  for  some 
opportunity  of  promoting  its  interests  by  legislation,  is  now 
as  if  it  had  never  been ;  slavery  is  no  longer  either  de 
nounced  or  defended  from  the  pulpits ;  the  division  of  polit 
ical  journals  into  friends  and  enemies  of  slavery  exists  no 
longer,  and  when  a  candidate  for  office  is  presented  for  the 
suffrages  of  his  fellow  citizens,  it  is  no  longer  asked,  "  What 
does  he  think  of  the  slavery  question  ?  "  So  far,  indeed,  does 
this  fierce  contest  seem  already  removed  into  the  domain  of 
the  past,  and  separated  from  the  questions  and  interests  of 
the  present  moment,  that  when  a  person  is  pointed  out  as 
having  been  a  distinguished  Abolitionist  he  is  looked  at  with 
somewhat  of  the  same  historical  interest  as  if  it  had  been 
said,  "  There  goes  one  who  fought  so  bravely  at  Lundy's 
Lane  ;  "  or,  "  There  is  one  who  commanded  a  company  of 
riflemen  at  the  battle  of  New  Orleans."  The  champions  of 
slavery  on  one  side  —  able  men  and  skilled  in  the  expedients 
of  party  warfare,  and  in  many  instances  uncorrupt  and  pure 
in  personal  character,  —  and  the  champions  of  the  slave  on 
the  other,  fearless  and  ready  for  the  martyrdom  which  they 
sometimes  suffered,  their  faculties  exalted  by  a  sense  of  dan 
ger,  —  can  now,  as  they  and  their  acts  pass  in  review  before 
the  historian,  be  judged  with  a  degree  of  calmness  belonging 
to  a  new  era  of  our  political  existence. 

But  the  great  conclusion  is  still  to  be  drawn  that  the  exist 
ence  of  slavery  in  our  Republic  was  at  utter  variance  with 
the  free  institutions  which  we  made  our  boast ;  and  that  it 
could  not  be  preserved  in  the  vast  growth  which  it  had  at 
tained  without  altering  in  a  great  degree  their  nature,  and 
communicating  to  them  its  own  despotic  character.  Where 
half  the  population  is  in  bondage  to  the  other  half  there  is  a 
constant  danger  that  the  subject  race  will  rise  against  their 
masters,  who  naturally  look  to  repression  and  terror  as  their 
means  of  defence.  The  later  history  of  slavery  in  our  coun 
try  is  full  of  examples  to  show  this  —  severe  laws  against 
sedition  in  the  slave  States,  an  enforced  silence  on  the  subject 
of  human  liberty,  an  expurgated  popular  literature,  and  vis 
itors  to  the  slave  States  chased  back  by  mobs  across  the  fron- 


PREFACE.  xin 

tier  which  they  had  imprudently  crossed.  It  is  remarkable 
that,  not  very  long  before  the  civil  war,  certain  of  the  south 
ern  journals  began  to  maintain  in  elaborate  leading  articles 
that  the  time  had  arrived  for  considering  whether  the  entire 
laboring  class  of  whatever  color  should  not  be  made  the  serfs 
of  the  land-owners  and  others  of  the  more  opulent  members 
of  society. 

A  history  like  this  would  have  been  incomplete  and  frag 
mentary  had  it  failed  to  record  the  final  fate  as  well  as  the 
rise  and  growth  of  an  institution  wielding  so  vast  an  influence 
both  in  society  and  politics,  with  champions  so  able  and  reso 
lute,  organized  with  such  skill,  occupying  so  wide  and  fertile 
a  domain,  and  rooted  there  with  such  firmness  as  to  be  re^ 
garded  by  the  friends  of  human  liberty  with  a  feeling  scarcely 
short  of  despair.  To  have  broken  oft*  the  narrative  before 
reaching  the  catastrophe,  would  have  been  like  rising  from 
the  spectacle  of  a  drama  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  act.  Few 
episodes  in  the  world's  history  have  been  so  complete  in 
themselves  as  this  of  American  slavery.  Few  have  brought 
into  activity  such  mighty  agencies,  or  occupied  so  vast  a 
theatre,  or  been  closed,  although  amid  fearful  carnage,  yet  in 
a  manner  so  satisfactory  to  the  sense  of  natural  justice. 

Here  is  the  place  to  speak  of  another  important  conclusion 
to  be  drawn  from  the  result  of  our  late  civil  war.  It  has 
proved  the  strength  of  our  political  system.  When  the  slave 
States  first  revolted  it  is  wonderful  with  what  unanimity  the 
people  of  the  Old  World,  even  those  who  wished  well  to  the 
Northern  States,  adopted  the  conclusion  that  the  Union  could 
endure  no  longer,  and  that  the  bond  once  broken  could  never 
be  reunited.  Those  powers  which  had  regarded  the  United 
States  as  a  somewhat  uncomfortable  neighbor,  rapidly  becom 
ing  too  strong  to  be  reasonable  in  its  dealings  with  the  mon 
archies  of  Europe,  fully  believed  that  thereafter  there  would 
exist,  on  the  North  American  continent,  two  rival  common 
wealths  of  the  same  origin,  yet  so  diverse  from  each  other  in 
their  institutions  as  to  be  involved  in  frequent  disagreements, 
and  thus  to  prove  effectual  checks  upon  each  other,  relieving 
the  European  powers  from  the  danger  of  aggression  in  this 


xiv  PREFACE. 

quarter.  It  was  sometimes  said  by  Englishmen  who  thought 
that  they  were  speaking  in  the  interest  of  humanity:  "All  the 
interest  we  feel  in  your  quarrel  is  this,  that  you  should  go  to 
pieces  as  quickly  and  with  as  little  bloodshed  as  possible."  The 
steps  taken  by  Great  Britain  and  France  were  in  accord  with 
the  expectation  of  which  I  have  spoken  ;  Britain  instantly 
declaring  the  slave  States  a  belligerent  power, —  a  virtual 
acknowledgment  of  their  independence,  —  and  France  posting 
a  dependent  Prince  in  Mexico,  with  the  view  of  intervening  in 
that  quarter  as  soon  as  it  might  appear  politic  to  do  so.  Till 
the  close  of  our  civil  war  the  armed  cohorts  of  France  hung 
like  a  thunder-cloud  over  our  southwestern  border,  but  the 
Jiour  never  came  when  the  signal  might  be  given  for  the 
grim  mass  to  move  northward. 

The  period  of  time  at  which  the  nation  inhabiting  the  do 
main  of  our  Republic  came  into  being  is  so  recent,  that  we 
may  trace  its  growth  with  as  much  distinctness  as  if  we  were 
the  contemporaries  of  its  birth.  The  records  of  its  early  exist 
ence  have  been  preserved  as  those  of  no  other  nation  have 
been  which  has  risen  to  any  importance  in  the  annals  of  the 
world.  To  the  guidance  of  these  the  historian  may  trust 
himself  securely,  with  no  danger  of  losing  his  way  among 
the  uncertain  shadows  of  tradition.  It  is  with  a  feeling  of 
wonder  that  he  sees  colonies,  planted  in  different  parts  of  the 
North  American  continent  so  remote  from  each  other,  under 
such  different  circumstances,  and  so  entirely  without  concert 
on  the  part  of  the  adventurers  who  led  them  thither,  united 
at  last  in  a  political  fabric  of  such  strength  and  solidity.  The 
columns  of  the  great  edifice  were  separately  laid  in  the  wil 
derness  amid  savage  tribes,  by  men  who  apparently  had  no 
thought  of  their  future  relation  to  each  other  ;  but  as  they 
rose  from  the  earth  it  seemed  as  if  a  guiding  intelligence  had 
planned  them  in  such  a  manner  that  in  due  time  they  might 
be  adjusted  to  each  other  in  a  single  structure.  Those  who 
at  the  outbreak  of  our  civil  war  administered  the  govern 
ments  of  Europe  had,  it  is  certain,  little  confidence  in  the 
stability  and  duration  of  a  political  fabric  so  framed.  It  was 
loosely  and  fortuitously  put  together,  they  thought,  of  ele- 


PREFACE.  XV 

ments  discordant  in  themselves,  whose  imperfect  cohesion  a 
shock  like  that  of  the  southern  revolt  would  destroy  forever. 

It  survived  that  shock,  however,  and,  in  part  at  least,  for 
the  very  reason  of  its  peculiar  structure.  It  survived  it  be 
cause  every  man  in  the  free  States  felt  that  he  was  a  part  of 
the  government ;  because  in  our  system  of  decentralized 
power  a  part  of  it  was  lodged  in  his  person.  He  felt  that 
he  was  challenged  when  the  Federal  Government  was  defied, 
and  that  he  was  robbed  when  the  rebels  took  possession  of  the 
forts  of  the  Federal  Government  and  its  munitions  of  war. 
The  quarrel  became  his  personal  concern,  and  the  entire 
people  of  the  North  rose  as  one  man  to  breast  and  beat  back 
this  bold  attack  upon  a  system  of  polity  which  every  man  of 
them  was  moved  to  defend  by  the  feeling  which  would  move 
him  to  defend  his  fireside.  Perhaps  out  of  this  fortuitous 
planting  of  our  continent  in  scattered  and  independent  settle 
ments  has  arisen  the  strongest  form  of  government,  so  far  as 
respects  cohesion  and  self-maintenance,  that  the  world  has 
seen.  Certainly  the  experience  of  the  last  few  years,  begin 
ning  with  the  civil  war,  gives  plausibility  to  this  idea. 

All  the  consequences  of  that  war  have  not  been  equally 
fortunate  with  this.  It  may  be  admitted  that,  in  some  in 
stances,  the  influence  of  a  military  life  on  the  young  men 
who  thronged  to  our  camps  was  salutary,  in  bringing  out  the 
better  qualities  of  their  character  and  moulding  it  to  a  more 
manly  pattern,  by  overcoming  the  love  of  ease  and  accustom 
ing  the  soldier  to  endure  suffering  and  brave  danger  for  the 
common  cause.  Yet  it  is  certain  that  in  other  men  it  en 
couraged  brutal  instincts  which  had  been  held  in  check  by 
the  restraints  of  a  peaceful  order  of  things  ;  that  it  made 
them  careless  of  inflicting  pain,  and  indifferent  to  the  taking 
of  life.  Accordingly,  after  the  close  of  the  war,  crimes  of  vio 
lence  became  fearfully  numerous,  men  more  often  carried 
about  deadly  weapons,  quarrels  more  often  led  to  homicide, 
robberies  accompanied  by  assassination  were  much  more 
frequent,  and  acts  of  housebreaking  were  perpetrated  with 
greater  audacity.  It  would  seem  invidious  to  say  that  these 
crimes  were  most  frequent  in  the  region  which  had  been  the 


xvi  PREFACE. 

seat  of  the  war ;  but  it  is  certain  that  there  the  peace  was 
often  deplorably  disturbed  by  quarrels  between  the  white  race 
and  the  colored  which  led  to  bloodshed.  Thus  the  state  of 
society  left  by  the  war  may  be  fairly  put  to  the  account  of 
the  great  error  committed  in  allowing  slavery  to  have  a  place 
among  our  institutions. 

But  while  men  were  watching  with  alarm  these  offences 
against  the  public  peace,  it  was  discovered,  with  no  little  sur 
prise,  that  crimes  of  fraud  had  become  as  numerous,  and  were 
equally  traceable  to  the  war  as  their  cause.  So  many  oppor 
tunities  had  presented  themselves  of  making  easy  bargains 
with  the  agents  of  the  government,  and  so  many  chances  of 
cheating  the  government  offered  themselves  in  the  haste  and 
confusion  with  which  most  transactions  of  this  kind  were 
accomplished,  that  hundreds  of  persons  of  whom  little  was 
known  save  that  they  had  become  suddenly  rich,  flaunted  in 
all  the  splendor  of  exorbitant  wealth,  and  exercised  the  in 
fluence  which  wealth  commands.  The  encouragement  which 
their  success  and  the  mystery  with  which  it  was  accompanied 
gave  to  dishonest  dealings  was  felt  throughout  the  commu 
nity,  and  the  evil  became  fearfully  contagious.  The  city  of 
New  York  was  a  principal  seat  of  these  enormities.  In  that 
busy  metropolis  men  are  so  earnestly  occupied  with  their  pri 
vate  affairs,  so  absorbed  in  the  competitions  of  business,  that 
it  is  not  easy  to  fix  the  attention  of  the  greater  proportion, 
even  of  the  most  intelligent,  upon  matters  of  public  and  gen 
eral  interest  as  long  as  the  chances  of  individual  success  are 
left  open.  But  the  boundless  waste  of  those  who  had  posses 
sion  of  the  public  funds,  the  sudden  increase  of  the  city  debt, 
and  the  enormous  taxation  to  which  the  citizens  were  sub 
jected,  at  length  alarmed  the  entire  community;  the  tax-pay 
ers  consulted  together ;  they  called  in  the  aid  of  the  most 
sagacious  and  resolute  men,  who  with  great  pains  tracked  the 
offenders  through  all  their  doublings  and  laid  their  practices 
bare  to  the  public  eye.  The  infamy  of  those  who  were  con 
cerned  in  these  enormities  followed  their  exposure. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  contagious  nature  of  these 
examples  of  corruption.  The  determination  to  effect  a  reform 


PREFACE.     •  xvii 

and  drag  the  offenders  to  justice,  when  onoe  awakened,  spread 
with  equal  rapidity.  It  is  remarkable  how,  immediately  after 
the  exposure  of  the  enormous  knaveries  committed  in  New 
York,  the  daily  journals  were  filled  with  accounts  of  lesser 
villainies  in  less  considerable  places.  It  seemed  for  a  while  as 
if  peculation  had  been  taken  up  by  a  large  class  as  a  profes 
sion,  so  numerous  were  the  instances  of  detection.  The  pub 
lic  vigilance  was  directed  against  every  person  in  a  pecuniary 
trust ;  some  who  had  never  before  been  suspected  found 
themselves  suddenly  in  the  custody  of  the  law,  and  others, 
fearing  that  their  turn  might  soon  come,  prudently  ran  away. 
There  never  has  been  a  time  when  it  was  so  dangerous  for  a 
public  man  to  make  a  slip  in  his  accounts.  Investigation  be 
came  the  order  of  the  day,  and  a  considerable  part  of  the  con 
tents  of  every  daily  paper  consisted  of  the  proceedings  of 
committees  formed  for  examining  into  the  accounts  of  men 
who  held  pecuniary  trusts.  At  first  sight  it  seemed  as  if  the 
world  had  suddenly  grown  worse ;  on  a  second  reflection  it 
was  clear  that  it  was  growing  better.  A  process  of  purgation 
was  going  on  ;  dishonest  men  were  stripped  of  the  power  of 
doing  further  mischief  and  branded  with  disgrace,  and  men 
of  whom  better  hopes  were  entertained  put  in  their  place. 
The  narrative  of  these  iniquities  could  not  properly  stop  short 
of  the  punishment  which  overtook  the  offenders,  and  which, 
while  it  makes  the  lesson  of  their  otherwise  worthless  lives 
instructive,  vindicates  to  some  extent  the  character  of  the 
nation  at  large. 

In  reviewing  the  history  of  the  last  hundred  years  there  is 
one  question  which  stands  out  in  special  prominence  :  the 
policy  of  encouraging  domestic  manufactures  by  high  duties 
on  goods  imported  from  other  countries.  It  was  recommended 
in  the  early  years  of  our  Republic  by  Hamilton,  whose  au 
thority  had  great  weight  with  a  large  class  of  his  fellow- 
citizens;  and  afterwards,  under  the  name  of  the  American  Sys 
tem,  was  made  the  battle-cry  of  a  great  party  under  a  no  less 
popular  leader,  Henry  Clay.  But  after  a  struggle  of  many 
years,  during  part  of  which  the  protective  system  seemed  to 
have  become  thoroughly  incorporated  into  our  revenue  laws, 


xviii  PREFACE. 

a  tendency  to  freedom  of  trade  began  to  assert  itself.  The 
tariff  of  duties  on  imported  commodities  became  from  time 
to  time  weeded  of  the  provisions  which  favored  particular 
manufactures,  and,  although  still  wanting  in  simplicity  of  pro 
ceeding  and  far  more  expensive  in  its  execution  than  it  should 
have  been,  was  in  the  main  liberal  and  not  unsatisfactory  to  all 
parties.  The  manufacturers  had  ceased  from  the  struggle  for 
special  duties,  and  seemed  content  with  those  which  were  laid 
merely  for  the  sake  of  revenue.  The  question  of  protection 
was  no  longer  a  matter  of  controversy. 

But  the  war  revived  the  old  quarrel,  and  left  it  a  legacy  to 
the  years  which  are  yet  to  come.  When  the  southern  mem 
bers  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  withdrew  from  Congress, 
there  were  found,  among  those  whom  they  left  in  their  seats,  a 
majority  who  had  been  educated  in  the  Henry  Clay  school  of 
politics,  and  were  therefore  attached  to  the  protective  system. 
In  laying  taxes  to  supply  the  necessities  of  the  Treasury,  they 
enacted  a  tariff  of  duties  more  rigidly  restrictive  and  of  more 
general  application  than  the  country  had  ever  before  known. 
This  opened  again  the  whole  controversy.  The  struggle  of 
forty  years,  which  had  ended  as  we  have  already  related,  is 
revived  under  circumstances  which  'Strongly  imply  that  we 
have  the  same  ground  to  go  over  again.  The  manufacturers 
are  not  likely  to  give  up  without  a  struggle  what  they  believe 
so  essential  to  their  prosperity ;  and  the  friends  of  free  trade, 
proverbially  tenacious  of  their  purposes,  are  not  likely  to  be 
satisfied  while  there  is  left  in  the  texture  of  our  revenue  laws 
a  single  thread  of  protection  which  their  ingenuity  can  detect 
or  their  skill  can  draw  out. 

The  history  of  our  Republic  shows  that  a  nation  does  not 
always  profit  by  its  own  experience,  even  though  it  be  of  an 
impressive  nature.  Our  government  began  the  first  century 
of  its  existence  with  a  resort  to  paper  money  and  closed  it 
with  repeating  the  expedient.  In  the  first  of  these  instances 
slips  of  paper  with  a  peculiar  stamp  were  made  to  pass  as 
money  by  the  authority  of  Congress, -and  were  known  by  the 
name  of  Continental  money,  which  soon  became  a  term  of  op 
probrium.  The  history  of  this  currency  is  a  sad  one :  a  his- 


PREFACE.  xix 

tory  of  creditors  defrauded,  families  reduced  from  competence 
to  poverty,  and  ragged  and  hunger-bitten  soldiers  who  were 
paid  their  wages  in  bits  of  paper  scarcely  worth  more  than  the 
coarse  material  on  which  their  nominal  value  was  stamped. 
The  more  of  this  Continental  money  was  issued  the  lower  it 
sank  in  value.  The  whole  land  was  filled  with  discontent,  and 
the  leaders  of  the  Revolution  were  in  the  utmost  perplexity. 
The  injustice  inflicted  and  the  distress  occasioned  by  this  policy 
are  not  merely  recorded  in  our  annals,  there  are  many  per 
sons  yet  living  who  have  heard  of  them  in  their  youth  at  the 
firesides  of  their  fathers. 

Eighty  years  afterwards,  in  the  midst  of  our  late  civil  war, 
when  the  necessity  of  raising  money  for  the  daily  expenses  of 
maintaining  and  moving  our  large  armies  from  place  to  place 
upon  the  vast  theatre  of  our  war,  began  to  press  somewhat 
severely  upon  our  government,  the  question  was  again  raised 
whether  the  government  notes  should  not  be  made  a  legal  ten 
der  in  the  payment  of  debts,  and  the  Treasury  relieved  from  the 
necessity  of  providing  for  their  redemption  in  coin.  The  Sec 
retary  of  the  Treasury  applied  to  some  of  the  most  eminent 
bankers  and  men  of  business,  English  and  American,  for  their 
opinions.  Certain  of  the  wisest  of  these  vehemently  dissuaded 
him  from  a  resort  to  paper  money.  They  pointed  to  the  dis 
asters  which  experience  had  shown  to  have  invariably  attended 
the  measure,  and  urged  him  to  trust  to  the  loyalty  of  the  coun 
try,  of  which  he  had  seen  such  gratifying  proofs  already  given, 
for  obtaining  the  necessary  supplies  of  money  for  the  war.  This 
could  be  done  by  issuing  debentures  payable  at  a  somewhat 
distant  date,  and  for  such  moderate  sums  as  persons  of  moder 
ate  means  could  conveniently  take.  At  all  events  they  urged 
that  the  expedient  of  resorting  to  paper  money  should  be  post 
poned  till  every  other  was  tried  and  the  necessity  for  it  became 
imminent  and  unavoidable.  These  wise  counsels  were  not  fol 
lowed.  Others  had  given  their  opinion  that  a  resort  to  paper 
money  was  unavoidable,  and  after  some  hesitation  it  was  re 
solved  to  take  the  step  immediately.  The  moment  that  the 
project  was  brought  before  Congress,  it  found  eager  cham 
pions,  both  on  the  floor  of  the  two  chambers  and  in  the  lobbies ; 


xx  PREFACE. 

for  whenever  a  measure  is  proposed  which  involves  a  change 
of  nominal  values,  there  spring  up  in  unexpected  quarters  hun 
dreds  of  patriotic  persons  to  assist  in  hurrying  it  through  Con 
gress.  The  government  was  relieved  of  the  obligation  of  pay 
ing  its  notes ;  but  a  solemn  pledge  was  given  that  they  should 
be  paid  at  the  earliest  practicable  moment.  While  the  war 
lasted,  we  went  on  making  issue  after  issue  of  these  notes,  with 
no  provision  for  their  payment.  Meantime  the  prices  of  every 
commodity  rose,  and  with  them  the  expenses  of  the  war,  — 
and  speculation  flourished. 

For  eight  years  after  the  war  no  approach  had  been  made 
towards  the  fulfilment  of  the  solemn  pledge  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  although  in  that  time  many  millions  of  the  national 
debt  had  been  paid  off  in  our  depreciated  currency.  So  vast 
was  the  mass  of  promises  to  pay,  and  so  small  the  accumula 
tions  of  gold  within  the  reach  of  the  government,  that  not 
one  of  those  who  within  that  period  administered  the  Treas 
ury  Department  ventured  to  propose  any  plan  for  returning 
to  specie  payments,  but,  averting  his  eyes  from  the  difficulty, 
allowed  our  finances  to  drift  toward  an  uncertain  future. 
Then  came  the  panic  of  1873,  which  swept  so  many  large 
banking  and  commercial  houses  to  their  ruin.  Immediately 
a  loud  call  was  heard  for  a  new  issue  of  paper  money,  from 
those  who  fancied  that  they  saw  in  the  measure  a  remedy  for 
their  own  pecuniary  embarrassments.  The  question  was 
hotly  debated  in  Congress ;  a  majority  of  both  houses  was 
found  to  be  in  its  favor ;  the  pledge  which  bound  the  country 
to  return  to  specie  payments  was  scouted,  as  given  in  igno 
rance  of  the  true  interests  of  the  country ;  and  a  bill  was 
passed,  adding,  as  President  Grant  observed  in  his  message,  a 
hundred  millions  to  our  depreciated  currency.  Fortunately 
for  the  country  he  sent  back  the  bill  with  his  objections,  and 
it  failed  to  become  a  law ;  else  the  mischiefs  and  disasters  of 
the  days  of  Continental  money  might  have  returned  upon  us, 
with  a  violence  proportioned  to  the  growth  which  our  com 
mercial  interests  had  in  the  meantime  attained. 

It  is  not  likely  that  this  question  will  again  be  raised  in 
our  day,  and  the  bitter  experience  which  we  have  had  of  the 


PREFACE.  xxi 

mischiefs  of  paper  money  in  these  two  instances  will  remain 
as  a  warning  to  the  coming  times ;  —  though  who  shall  say 
with  any  confidence  that  the  warning  will  be  duly  heeded  ? 
But  there  is  another  controversy  bequeathed  to  us  by  the 
late  civil  war,  which  will  probably  lead  to  acrimonious  and 
protracted  disputes,  and  perhaps  be  made  to  some  extent  the 
basis  of  party  divisions.  Of  that  I  would  now  speak. 

Before  the  war  the  boundaries  of  the  powers  assigned  to 
the  National  Government,  and  those  which  remained  with  the 
several  States,  were  pretty  sharply  defined  by  usage,  and  at 
tempts  were  but  rarely  made  to  go  beyond  them.  The  leaders 
of  opinion  in  the  Southern  States  deemed  it  necessary  to  the 
security  and  permanence  of  slavery,  that  any  encroachment 
of  the  National  Government  on  the  rights  reserved  to  the 
States  should  be  resisted  to  the  utmost ;  and  it  must  be  ad 
mitted  that,  although  many  of  them  pushed  the  claim  of  State 
sovereignty  to  an  absurd  extent,  they  did  good  service  in 
keeping  the  eyes  of  the  people  fixed  upon  that  limit  beyond 
which,  under  our  Constitution,  the  National  Government  has 
neither  function  nor  power.  When  the  civil  war  broke  out  it 
was  apparent  that  the  majority  of  those  who  remained  in  Con 
gress  had  not  been  trained  to  be  scrupulous  on  this  point. 
One  of  their  early  measures,  —  the  creation  of  a  system  of 
national  banks,  —  would,  twenty  years  before,  have  been 
regarded  by  a  majority  of  the  people  of  the  United  States  as 
a  direct  violation  of  the  Constitution.  Other  measures  were 
adopted  in  the  course  of  the  war  for  which  it  was  impossible 
to  find  any  authority  in  the  Constitution,  and  of  which  the 
sole  justification  was  military  necessity.  As  compared  with 
the  state  of  opinion  which  prevailed  before  the  war,  it  is  man 
ifest  that  a  certain  indifference  to  the  distinction  between  the 
Federal  power  and  that  of  the  States  has  been  creeping  into 
our  politics.  Schemes  for  accumulating  power  in  the  govern 
ment  at  Washington,  by  making  it  the  owner  of  our  rail 
ways,  for  administering  telegraphic  communication  by  Federal 
agency,  for  cutting  canals  between  river  and  river,  and  for 
an  extensive  system  of  national  education  with  a  central 
bureau  at  Washington,  show  this  tendency.  These  and  kin- 


xxil  PREFACE. 

dred  projects  will  most  certainly  give  ample  occasion  for  pro 
tracted  disputes  on  the  floor  of  Congress  and  in  the  daily 
press.  On  one  hand  will  be  urged,  and  plausibly,  the  public 
convenience ;  and  on  the  other  the  danger  lest  our  govern 
ment  of  nicely  balanced  powers  should  degenerate  into  a 
mere  form,  and  the  proper  functions  of  the  States  be  absorbed 
into  the  central  authority,  —  a  fate  like  that  predicted  by 
some  astronomers  for  our  solar  system,  when  the  orbs  that 
revolve  about  the  sun,  describing  narrower  and  narrower  cir 
cles,  shall  fall  into  the  central  luminary  to  be  incorporated 
with  it  forever. 

In  looking  over  this  vast  array  of  important  questions  set 
tled,  and  of  new  ones  just  arising  on  the  field  of  vision,  it  is 
difficult  to  resist  the  conclusion  that  the  historian  of  our  Re 
public  would  perform  his  office  but  in  part  who  should  stop 
short  of  the  cycle  of  a  hundred  years  from  the  birth  of  our 
nation.  In  that  period  great  interests  have  been  disposed  of 
and  laid  aside  forever ;  with  the  next  hundred  years,  we  have 
a  new  era  with  new  responsibilities,  which  we  are  to  meet 
with  what  wisdom  we  may.  It  is  matter  of  rejoicing  that 
among  the  latest  events  of  this  first  century,  and  following 
close  upon  our  great  civil  war,  we  are  able  to  record  a  great 
triumph  of  the  cause  of  peace  and  civilization  in  the  settle 
ment  of  our  collateral  quarrel  with  Great  Britain,  a  quarrel 
which  in  other  times  might  easily  have  been  nursed  into  a 
war.  Let  us  hope  that  this  example  will  be  followed  by  all 
the  nations  of  the  earth  in  their  future  controversies. 

To  what  has  been  said  of  the  plan  of  the  present  history 
in  the  first  paragraph  of  this  Introduction,  I  have  yet  some 
thing  to  add.  The  works  of  the  Mound  Builders,  which  lie 
scattered  by  thousands  over  our  territory,  from  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico  to  Oregon,  and  which  within  the  last  thirty  years 
have  been  even  more  carefully  examined  than  ever  before, 
prove  clearly,  what  was  previously  doubted  by  many,  the 
existence  of  a  semi-civilized  race  dwelling  within  our  borders, 
who  preceded  the  savage  tribes  found  here  by  the  discoverers 
from  the  Old  World,  and  who  disappeared  at  some  unknown 
era,  leaving  behind  them  no  tradition,  nor  any  record  save 


PREFACE.  xxiii 

these  remarkable  monuments.  With  what  we  have  learned 
of  this  race,  since  any  history  of  this  country  has  been  pub 
lished,  and  what  has  been  discovered  by  modern  science  of 
the  pre-historic  existence  of  man,  pertaining  to  our  continent 
as  well  as  to  those  of  the  other  hemisphere,  the  present 
history  naturally  begins,  and  it  has  been  thought  important 
to  record,  briefly  but  clearly  and  comprehensively,  the  present 
state  of  our  knowledge  of  the  Mound  Builders,  as  well  as  of 
the  savage  tribes  by  whom  they  were  succeeded,  as  prelim 
inary  to  the  discovery  and  settlement  of  the  country  by 
another  race. 

The  history  of  the  early  voyagers  and  colonists  of  our  con 
tinent,  both  before  and  after  Columbus,  is  made  up  of  inci 
dents  which  have  often  been  wrought  into  connected  narra 
tives,  but  not  in  such  a  manner  as  to  deprive  other  historians 
of  the  power  of  giving  them,  by  a  due  selection  of  circum 
stances,  something  of  a  new  interest.  The  adventures  of 
those  whose  explorations  preceded  the  permanent  settlement 
of  our  territory  during  three  generations  of  mankind  were  of 
a  nature  to  call  into  exercise  qualities  which  command  our  ad 
miration,  —  courage,  perseverance,  patient  endurance  of  hard 
ship,  and  ready  resources  in  times  of  great  emergency.  The 
recital  of  these  adventures  brings  us  down  to  the  period  when 
our  country  began  to  be  peopled  from  the  Old  World,  by 
colonists  establishing  themselves  at  different  points  along  our 
coast,  —  companies  of  men  and  women  seeking  a  home  in  the 
New  World  for  different  purposes,  but  all  of  them  courageous 
and  adventurous,  unapt  to  quail  before  discouragement,  and 
prepared  to  encounter  disaster.  It  was  perhaps  owing  in 
part  to  a  conformity  of  character  in  these  respects,  that,  as 
they  grew  in  population,  these  settlements  coalesced  so  readily 
into  one  nation,  and  presented  so  united  a  front  in  resistance 
to  the  tyrannical  pretensions  of  the  mother  country.  In  giv 
ing  the  history  of  these  colonies,  in  tracing  their  origin  and 
growth,  and  delineating  their  character,  it  will  be  seen  that 
here,  like  the  future  oak  wrapped  up  in  the  acorn,  lay  the 
peculiar  form  of  government  which  distinguishes  our  republic 
among  the  nations,  and  that  from  what  may  be  called  the 


xxiv  PREFACE. 

accidental  formation  of  these  communities,  small  at  first, 
distant  from  one  another,  and  organized  independently  of  each 
other,  grew  the  composite  structure  of  our  national  polity, 
which  we  regard  as  so  important  to  our  liberties.  The  events 
of  this  period  of  adolescence  and  immaturity  in  our  political 
institutions,  lasting  for  a  century  and  a  half,  must,  of  course, 
be  given  in  a  condensed  form ;  but  this  has  been  done,  it  is 
hoped,  with  sufficient  fulness  to  enable  the  reader  to  see  how 
naturally,  from  the  beginnings  of  which  we  have,  spoken,  arose 
the  confederated  Republic  now  so  great  and  powerful. 

The  attention  of  the  reader,  neither  in  this  part  of  the 
work  nor  elsewhere,  will  be  occupied  with  the  growth  of  our 
population  and  our  political  progress  to  such  an  extent  as  to 
neglect  the  advancement  made  in  the  arts  of  peace  and  the 
refinements  of  life.  The  customs  and  usages  of  past  gen 
erations,  their  modes  of  living  and  ways  of  thinking,  their 
occupations  and  amusements,  their  condition  in  respect  of 
public  and  private  morals,  will  be  found  described  in  these 
pages,  and  a  portraiture  given,  so  far  as  its  true  outlines,  its 
lights  and  shades,  can  now  be  discerned,  of  society  in  the  past. 
The  changes  which  these  at  different  periods  have  undergone 
will  be  carefully  noted. 

The  history  of  the  United  States  naturally  divides  itself 
into  three  periods,  upon  the  third  of  which  we  lately,  at  the 
close  of  our  civil  war,  entered  as  a  people,  with  congruous 
institutions  in  every  part  of  our  vast  territory.  The  first  was 
the  colonial  period  ;  the  second  includes  the  years  which 
elapsed  from  the  Declaration  of  Independence  to  the  struggle 
which  closed  with  the  extinction  of  slavery.  The  colonial 
period  was  a  time  of  tutelage,  of  struggle  and  dependence, 
the  childhood  of  the  future  nation.  But  our  real  growth,  as  a 
distinct  member  of  the  community  of  nations,  belongs  to  the 
second  period,  and  began  when  we  were  strong  enough  to 
assert  and  maintain  our  independence.  To  this  second  period 
a  large  space  has  been  allotted  in  the  present  work.  Not 
that  the  mere  military  annals  of  our  Revolutionary  War  would 
seem  to  require  a  large  proportion  of  this  space,  but  the  vari 
ous  attendant  circumstances,  the  previous  controversies  with 


PREFACE.  xxv 

the  mother  country,  in  which  all  the  colonies  were  more  or 
less  interested,  and  which  grew  into  a  common  cause  ;  the 
consultations  which  followed ;  the  defiance  of  the  mother 
country,  in  which  they  all  joined ;  the  service  in  an  arrnv 
which  made  all  the  colonists  fellow-soldiers;  the  common 
danger,  the  common  privations,  sufferings,  and  expedients,  the 
common  sorrow  at  reverses  and  rejoicing  at  victories,  require 
to  be  fully  set  forth,  that  it  may  be  seen  by  how  natural  a 
transition  these  widely  scattered  communities  became  united 
in  a  federal  Republic,  which  has  since  rapidly  risen  to  take  its 
place  among  the  foremost  nations  of  the  world,  with  a  popu 
lation  which  has  increased  tenfold,  and  a  sisterhood  of  States 
enlarged  from  thirteen  to  thirty-seven. 

So  crowded  with  events  and  controversies  is  this  second 
part  of  our  history,  and  the  few  years  which  have  elapsed  of 
the  third ;  so  rapid  has  been  the  accumulation  of  wealth  and 
the  growth  of  trade ;  so  great  have  been  the  achievements 
of  inventive  art  and  the  applied  sciences ;  with  such  celerity 
has  our  population  spread  itself  over  new  regions,  and  so 
vehement  have  been  the  struggles  maintained  against  abuses, 
moral  and  political,  that  it  has  not  been  easy  to  give  due  atten 
tion  to  all  of  them,  without  exceeding  the  limits  prescribed 
for  this  work.  But  we  have  aimed  to  preserve  a  due  propor 
tion  in  the  recital  of  events  and  the  analysis  of  causes,  — 
treating  the  most  important  with  a  certain  fulness  of  recital, 
and  passing  rapidly  over  the  rest,  and  in  the  meantime  not 
permitting  ourselves  in  any  part  of  the  work  to  indulge  a 
boastful  vein,  nor  to  overlook  the  faults  and  mistakes,  the 
national  sins  and  wrongs  of  which  we  may  have  been  guilty. 
We  have  endeavored  to  divest  ourselves,  while  engaged  in 
this  task,  of  all  local  prejudices,  and  every  influence  which 
might  affect  the  impartiality  of  the  narrative. 

In  writing  the  history  of  the  only  great  nation  on  the 
globe,  the  beginnings  of  which  are  fully  recorded  in  contem 
porary  writings,  and  for  which  we  are  not  compelled,  as  in 
other  cases,  to  grope  in  the  darkness  of  tradition,  the  authors 
of  this  work  have  ascended  to  the  proper  sources,  the  ancient 
records  themselves.  The  narrative  has  been  drawn  irnme- 


xxvi  PREFACE. 

diately  from  these  writings,  and  by  them  has  every  statement 
and  date  of  our  early  history  been  verified.  For  the  later 
periods,  the  materials  are  of  course  voluminous  and  circum 
stantial,  even  to  embarrassment.  We  are  not  without  the 
hope  that  those  who  read  what  we  have  written  will  see  in 
the  past,  with  all  its  vicissitudes,  and  with  all  our  own  short 
comings,  the  promise  of  a  prosperous  and  honorable  future, 
of  concord  at  home  and  peace  and  respect  abroad,  and  that 
the  same  cheerful  piety  which  leads  the  good  man  to  put  his 
personal  trust  in  a  kind  Providence,  will  prompt  the  good 
citizen  to  cherish  an  equal  confidence  in  regard  to  the  destiny 
reserved  for  our  beloved  country. 

WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 
NEW  YORK,  1876. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   I. 

THE   PRE-HISTORIC   MAN. 

PAGK 

MAN  COEVAL  WITH  EXTINCT  ANIMALS. — THE  CAVE-PEOPLE.  —  SCANDINAVIAN 
SHELL-HEAPS.  —  LAKE-DWELLINGS  OF  SWITZERLAND.  —  HABITS  OF  THE  PRIM 
ITIVE  MAN.  —  Two  STONE  AGES.  —  RESEMBLANCE  BETWEEN  STONE  RELICS  OF 
TWO  HEMISPHERES.  —  AMERICA  THE  OLDEST  CONTINENT.  —  A  ZONE  OF  PYRA 
MIDS. —  TRADITIONS  OF  A  LOST  CONTINENT. —  SHELL-HEAPS  IN  UNITED  STATES. 
—  A  PRE-HISTORIC  HUNT  IN  MISSOURI.  —  HUMAN  REMAINS  IN  GOLD-DRIFT  OF 
CALIFORNIA.  —  SUPERIOR  ANTIQUITY  OF  MAN  IN  AMERICA  1 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE   MOUND   BUILDERS. 

PROGRESS  IN  CIVILIZATION  OF  NORTH  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  —  PRE-HISTORIC  RACE 
IN  THE  WESTERN  HEMISPHERE.  —  EARTHWORKS  IN  THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY. — 
BIG  ELEPHANT  MOUND.  —  GARDEN-BEDS.  —  MILITARY  WORKS.  —  TEMPLE  AND 
ALTAR  MOUNDS.  —  RELICS  FOUND  IN  THESE  TUMULI.  —  ANCIENT  COPPEI!- 
MINING  AT  LAKE  SUPERIOR.  —  CONNECTION  BETWEEN  THIS  AND  LATER  CIVILI 
ZATIONS. —  REMAINS  IN  MEXICO  AND  CENTRAL  AMERICA. — SKULLS  FOUND  IN 
THE  MOUNDS 19 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE   NORTHMEN   IN   AMERICA. 

EARLY  VOYAGES.  —  DISCOVERY  OF  ICELAND.  —  GREENLAND  COLONIZED  BY  ERIC 
THE  RED.  —  BJARNI  HERJULFSON  DISCOVERS  AMERICA.  —  SONS  OF  ERIC  THE 
RED. —  LEIF'S  VOYAGE  TO  VINLAND  THE  GOOD.  —  EXPEDITION  OF  THORVALD. 
—  His  DEATH.  —  COLONY  OF  THORFINN  KARLSEFNE. — FIGHT  WITH  SKR^L- 
LINGS. —  SUPPOSED  IRISH  SETTLEMENTS  IN  AMERICA.  —  COLONY  OF  FREYDIS. — 
THE  MASSACHE.  —  GLOOMY  WINTER  AT  VINLAND.  —  ROUND  TOWER  AT  NEW 
PORT. —  DIGHTON  ROCK. — THE  ICELANDIC  SAGAS 35 


xxviii  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

FEE-COLUMBIAN    VOYAGES   WESTWARD. 

ARABIAN  SAILORS  ON  THE  SEA  OF  DARKNESS.  —  WELSH  TRADITION  OF  AMER 
ICAN  DISCOVERY. —  VOYAGE  OF  MADOC,  PRINCE  OF  WALES.  —  EVIDENCE  AD 
DUCED. —  SUPPOSED  TRACES  OF  WELSH  AMONG  DOEGS,  MANDANS  AND  MOUND 
BUILDERS.  —  NARRATIVE  OF  THE  BROTHERS  ZENI.  —  SHIPWRECK  OF  NICOLO 
ZENO  AT  FRISLAND.  —  His  ACCOUNT  OF  ENGRONELAND.  —  ADVENTURES  OF  A 
FRISLAND  FISHERMAN. — THE  WESTERN  VOYAGE  OF  PRINCE  ZICHMNI.  —  CHI 
NESE  DISCOVERY  OF  FUSANG.  —  STATE  OF  NAUTICAL  AND  GEOGRAPHICAL 
KNOWLEDGE  BEFORE  COLUMBUS 64 

CHAPTER   V. 

INDIA  —  THE   EL   DORADO    OF   COLUMBUS. 

THE  KINGDOM  OF  CATHAY.  —  EFFORTS  IN  EUROPE  TO  FIND  A  SEA-WAY  TO 
INDIA.  —  PRINCE  HENRY  THE  NAVIGATOR. — BIRTH  AND  EARLY  LIFE  OF 
CHRISTOPHER  COLUMBUS. —  His  DESIGN  OF  A  WESTERN  VOYAGE  TO  INDIA. — 
FAITH  IN  HIS  DIVINE  MISSION.  —  THE  THEORIES  OF  CONTEMPORARY  GEOG 
RAPHERS. —  His  LIFE  IN  SPAIN.  —  THE  COUNCIL  AT  SALAMANCA.  —  His  FIRST 
VOYAGE.  —  His  BELIEF  THAT  HE  HAS  DISCOVERED  INDIA.  —  THE  DELUSIOX  OF 
HIS  LIFE.  —  His  BRIEF  HONOR  AND  FINAL  DISGRACE 92 

CHAPTER   VI. 

COLUMBUS,    VESPUCCI,    AND   THE    CABOTS. 

THIRD  VOYAGE  OF  COLUMBUS.  —  His  DISCOVERY-  OF  THE  MAIN  LAND.  —  THE 
VOYAGE  OF  AMERIGO  VESPUCCI.  —  FIRST  PRINTED  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  NEW 
WORLD.  —  PUBLICATIONS  OF  ST.  DIE  COLLEGE.  —  THE  PRINTER-MONKS, 
WALDSEEMULLER  AND  RINGMANN.  —  EXPEDITION  OF  THE  CABOTS  FROM  ENG 
LAND. —  NORTH  AMERICA  DISCOVERED.  —  MAP  OF  SEBASTIAN  CABOT. — JOHN 
CABOT'S  PATENTS  FROM  HENRY  VII.  —  FIRST  ENGLISH  COLONY  SENT  TO  THE 
NEW  WORLD.  —  SEBASTIAN  CABOT  SAILS  DOWN  THE  AMERICAN  COAST  .  .118 


CHAPTER  VII. 

SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS. 

DESIGNS    FOR    THE   DISCOVERY    OF   A    NORTHWEST    PASSAGE    TO    INDIA.  —  THE 

CORTKREAL    VOYAGES. VASCO    NUNEZ    DE    BALBOA    REACHES    THE    PACIFIC 

OCEAN.  —  SEARCH  FOR  THE  FOUNTAIN  OF  YOUTH.  —  FLORIDA  DISCOVERED. — 
GULF  OF  MEXICO  SAILED  OVER. —  EXPLORATIONS  ON  THE  ATLANTIC  SEA- 
COAST. —  ESTAVAN  GOMEZ  ON  THE  BORDERS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES.  —  EX 
PEDITION  OF  PAMPHILO  DE  NARVAEZ  TO  FLORIDA.  —  ADVENTURES  OF  CABEgA 
DE  VACA  — THE  ENTERPRISE  OF  HERNANDO  DE  SOTO.  —  THE  DISCOVERY  OF 
THE  MISSISSIPPI  RIVER.  —  DEATH  AND  DRAMATIC  BURIAL  OF  DE  SOTO. — 
RETURN  OF  THE  TROOPS  OF  DE  SOTO  — TRISTAN  DE  LUNA'S  ATTEMPT  TO 
FOUND  A  COLONY  .  139 


CONTENTS.  xxix 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

FRENCH   DISCOVERIES   AND   ATTEMPTS   AT   COLONIZATION. 

BRETON  FISHERMEN  ON  NEWFOUNDLAND  BANKS. —  GIOVANNI  DA  VERRAZANO 
FIRST  ENTERS  NEW  YORK  HARBOR. JACQUES  CARTIKR  SENT  ON  AN  AMER 
ICAN  EXPEDITION.  —  EXPLORATION  OF  THE  ST.  LAWRENCE  RIVER.  —  CAR- 
TIER'S  VISIT  TO  THE  INDIAN  TOWN  OF  HOCHELAGA.  —  VOYAGE  OF  FRANCIS 

DE    LA   ROQUE,    LORD   OF   ROBERVAL. THE    HUGUENOTS   SEEK   AN  ASYLUM 

IN  AMERICA.  —  THE  COLONY  OF  ADMIRAL  COLIGNY.  —  JOHN  RIBAULT  GOES 
TO  FLORIDA.  —  SETTING  UP  THE  ARMS  OF  FRANCE.  —  LAUDONNIERE  COMMANDS 
A  SECOND  ENTERPRISE.  —  BUILDING  or  FORT  CAROLINE.  —  PROGRESS  OF  THE 
COLONY  .  . 174 


CHAPTER   IX. 

FRENCH    AND   SPANISH    COLONISTS   IN  FLORIDA. 

PLOTS    AGAINST     THE     FRENCH    GOVERNOR    LAUDONNIERE. OPEN    MUTINY  IN 

HIS  COLONY.  —  FIGHT  WITH  INDIANS.  —  VISIT  OF  AN  ENGLISH  FLEET  TO 
PORT  ROYAL.  —  ARRIVAL  OF  RIBAULT  WITH  A  FLEET  OF  SEVEN  SHIPS. — 
CRUSADE  OF  PEDRO  MENENDEZ  AGAINST  HERETICS.  —  His  ATTACK  ON  FORT 
CAROLINE. — SLAUGHTER  OF  RIBAULT  AND  HIS  MEN  BY  THE  SPANIARDS. — 
FOUNDING  OF  THE  FIRST  PERMANENT  SETTLEMENT  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. — 
INDIGNATION  OF  THE  FRENCH  AT  THE  SPANISH  ATROCITIES. —  DOMINIQUE 

DE     GOURGUES     GOES     TO  FLORIDA.  HE      MAKES      ALLIES     OF     THE     SAVAGES. 

ATTACK  ON  THE  SPANISH  FORT.  —  THE  BLOODY  RETALIATION.  —  A  SPANISH 
MISSION  ON  THE  RAPPAHANNOCK 200 


CHAPTER   X. 

ENGLISH   VOYAGES   AND   ATTEMPTS   AT    SETTLEMENT. 

FIRST  IMPULSE  IN  ENGLAND  TOWARD  AMERICAN  COLONIZATION.  —  UNSUCCESS 
FUL  VOYAGES.  —  THEORIES  OF  A  NORTHEAST  PASSAGE. — VOYAGE  OF  SIR 
HUGH  WlLLOUGHBY  AND  RlCHARD  CHANCELLOR.  — FROBISHER  AND  DAVIS 
IN  THE  NORTHWEST.  —  SIR  HUMPHREY  GILBERT'S  PLAN  FOR  AMERICAN  SET 
TLEMENTS. —  His  DEPARTURE  FROM  ENGLAND  AND  ARRIVAL  AT  NEWFOUND 
LAND. —  Loss  OF  SIR  HUMPHREY  ON  HIS  RETURN. — WALTER  RALEIGH  SENDS 
TWO  SHIPS  TO  EXPLORE  IN  AMERICA. —  HlS  FlRST  COLONY  REACHES  THE 
COAST  OF  NORTH  CAROLINA. — TOBACCO  INTRODUCED  INTO  ENGLAND.  —  NEW 
PLANTATION  BEGUN  UNDER  GOVERNOR  JOHN  WHITE.  —  MYSTERIOUS  DIS 
APPEARANCE  OF  THE  SETTLERS.  —  UNSUCCESSFUL  SEARCH  FOR  THE  LOST  COL 
ONY.  —  RALEIGH'S  ATTEMPT  AT  COLONIZATION  ENDED  BY  IMPRISONMENT  .  .  224 


CHAPTER  XI. 

FIRST   ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT   IN   AMERICA. 

GOSNOLD'S  EXPEDITION.  —  PATENT  GRANTED  TO  LONDON  AND  PLYMOUTH  COM 
PANIES. —  A  COLONY  SETS  OUT  FOR  VIRGINIA.  —  DISCORD  ON  SHIPBOARD. — 
THE  BUILDING  OF  JAMESTOWN. — NEWPORT'S  EXPLORATION  OF  THE  RIVER. — 


xxx  CONTENTS. 

GOVERNORSHIP  OF  EDWARD  WINGFIELD. —  DISCONTENT  AND  SUFFERING  AMONG 
THE  COLONISTS.  —  THE  INDIAN  CHIEF  POWHATAN. — ACCOUNTS  OF  SMITHS 
CAPTURE  BY  THE  SAVAGES.  —  DISCREPANCIES  IN  SMITH'S  OWN  STORY. — 
RETURN  OF  NEWPORT  FROM  ENGLAND.  —  CORONATION  OF  POWHATAN.  —  SER 
VICES  OF  SMITH  TO  THK  COLONY.  —  THE  NEW  CHARTER.  —  EXPEDITION  OF 
GATES  AND  SOMERS.  —  THE  TEMPEST  AND  THE  SHIPWRECK. —  OPPORTUNE 
COMING  OF  LORD  DE  LA  WAKRE. — CODE  OF  LAWS  FOR  THE  COLONY.— 
ADMINISTRATION  OF  GATES  AND  DALE.  —  CULTIVATION  OF  TOBACCO.  —  MAR 
RIAGE  OF  POCAHONTAS.  —  SANDYS  AND  YfiARDLEY.  THE  COLONY  FIRMLY 

ESTABLISHED. —  WHITE  AND  BLACK  SLAVERY.  TlJE  FlRST  AMERICAN  LEGIS 
LATURE  262 


CHAPTER   XII. 

COLONIZATION   UNDER   THE   NORTHERN   COMPANY. 

THE  SEA-COAST  OF  MAINE. —  THE  EARLY  FISHERMEN.  —  FRENCH  TRADERS. — 
PONTGRAVE  AND  POUTRINCOURT.  —  GEORGE  WEYMOUTH's  VOYAGE.  —  COLONY 
OF  CHIEF  JUSTICE  POPHAM.  —  SAMUEL  CHAMPLAIN  IN  NEW  YORK. —  SETTLE 
MENT  ON  MT.  DESERT. —  ARGALL'S  DESTRUCTION  OF  THE  FRENCH  COLONY. — 
JOHN  SMITH  IN  NEW  ENGLAND. — EXPEDITIONS  OF  FERDINANDO  GORGES. — 
.SECOND  CHARTER  OF  THE  PLYMOUTH  COMPANY.  —  NOVA  SCOTIA  GIVEN  TO  SIR 
WILLIAM  ALEXANDER. —  GRANT  OF  THE  PLYMOUTH  COMPANY  TO  GORGES. — 
FIRST  TOWNS  IN  NEW  HAMPSHIRE  AND  MAINE. — THE  BREAKING  UP  OF  THE 
PLYMOUTH  COMPANY.  —  CHARACTER  OF  GORGES .  308 


CHAPTER    XIII. 

DUTCH    EXPEDITIONS   TO   NORTH    AMERICA.  —  SETTLEMENT    OF 
NEW   AMSTERDAM. 

COMMERCIAL  ENTERPISE  AND  PROSPERITY  OF  THE  DUTCH. —  THEIR  INTEREST 
IN  A  SHORT  ROUTE  TO  INDIA.  —  EARLY  NORTHEAST  VOYAGES. — HENRY  HUD 
SON  EMPLOYED  BY  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY. HlS  FlRST  VOYAGE  TO  AMER 
ICA. —  ENTRANCE  INTO  NEW  YORK  BAY  AND  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  HUDSON 
RIVEK.  —  His  RETURN  TO  ENGLAND.  —  VOYAGE  TO  HUDSON'S  BAY. —  THE 
DUTCH  ESTABLISH  TRADING-POSTS  AT  MANHATTAN  ISLAND.  —  DUTCH  WEST 
INDIA  COMPANY  CHARTERED.  —  EMIGRATION  OF  WALLOONS.  —  SETTLEMENTS 
ON  SITES  OF  ALBANY  AND  NEW  YORK  CITY" .  .339 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

THE   PURITANS. 

THE  PURITANS  UNDER  JAMES  I.  —  SOCIAL  CONDITION  OF  THE  ENGLISH  AT 
THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.  —  THE  SEPARATISTS  OF 
NORTH  NOTTINGHAMSHIRE.  —  BREWSTER  AND  THE  EPISCOPAL  RESIDENCE  AT 
SCROOBY.  —  PERSECUTION  OF  THE  PURITANS.  —  THEIR  ATTEMPTS  TO  ESCAPE 
FROM  ENGLAND.  —  LONG  EXILE  IN  HOLLAND.  —  MOTIVES  FOR  A  PROPOSED 
REMOVAL  TO  AMERICA. —  PETITION  TO  KING  JAMES.  —  NEGOTIATIONS  WITH 
THE  DUTCH.  —  EMBARKATION  OF  THE  PILGRIMS  AT  DELFT-HAVEN. —  FINAL 
DEPARTURE  OF  THE  "MAY  FLOWER"  FROM  ENGLAND.  —  ARRIVAL  AT  CAPE 
COD.  —  FORM  OF  GOVERNMENT  ADOPTED.  — EXPLORATIONS  ALONG  THE  COAST.  — 
SITE  FOR  A  COLONY  SELECTED. —  CONFUSION  OF  FACTS  AND  DATES  AS  TO  THE 
LANDING  AT  PLYMOUTH.  —  THE  FIRST  WINTER. —  SUFFERINGS  AND  DEATHS  .  370 


CONTENTS.  xxxi 

CHAPTER  XV. 

THE   PILGRIMS   AT   PLYMOUTH. 

THE  COMING  OP  FRIENDLY  INDIANS.  —  SAMOSET  AND  SQUANTO.  —  CAPTAIN 
DERMER'S  PREVIOUS  VISIT  TO  PLYMOUTH.  —  STANDISH'S  VISIT  TO  BOSTON 
HARBOR.  —  REINFORCEMENTS  FROM  ENGLAND.  —  THE  FIRST  CHRISTMAS  AT 
PLYMOUTH. -r- HOSTILE  MESSAGE  FROM  THE  NARRAGANSETTS.  —  ARRIVAL  OF 
WESTON'S  COLONISTS. — THEIR  SETTLEMENT  AT  WESSAGUSSET.  —  AN  INDIAN 
CONSPIRACY.  —  STANDISH'S  EXPEDITION  AND  THE  PLOT  DEFEATED.  —  THE 
GRIEF  OF  PASTOR  ROBINSON.  —  ARRIVAL  OF  ROBERT  GORGES. — FIRST  ALLOT 
MENT  OF  LAND  IN  PLYMOUTH. — JOHN  PEIRCE'S  PATENT. — THE  LYFORD  AND 
OLDHAM  CONSPIRACY.  —  THEIR  BANISHMENT.  —  BREAKING  UP  OF  THE  LONDON 
COMPANY.  —  THE  PILGRIMS  THROWN  ON  THEIR  OWN  RESOURCES.  —  THE  FISH 
ING  STATION  AT  CAPE  ANN. —  ENCOUNTER  BETWEEN  CAPTAIN  STANDISH  AND 
MR.  HEWES.  —  THE  DORCHESTER  SETTLEMENT  AT  CAPE  ANN.  —  CONANT'S 
CHARGE  OF  IT,  AND  HIS  REMOVAL  TO  NAUMKEAG.  —  SETTLEMENTS  ABOUT 
BOSTON  .HARBOR.  —  MORTON  OF  MERRY  MOUNT.  —  STANDISH'S  ARREST  OF 
MORTON 400 

CHAPTER   XVI. 

PROGRESS   OF  DUTCH  COLONIZATION. 

THE  ORDER  OF  PATRONS  ESTABLISHED  IN  NEW  NETHERLAND.  —  DIVISION  AND 
MONOPOLY  OF  LANDS. —  THE  COMPANY  OVERREACHED  BY  THE  PATROONS. — 
MASSACRE  OF  THE  COLONISTS  OF  SWAANENDAEL.  —  WOUTER  VAN  TWILLER 
APPOINTED  GOVERNOR.  —  WEAKNESS  AND  ABSURDITIES  OF  HIS  ADMINISTRA 
TION. —  SUPERSEDED  BY  WILLIAM  KIEFT. — POPULAR  MEASURES  OF  THE 
COUNCIL  AT  AMSTERDAM. — PURCHASE  OF  LANDS  FROM  PATROONS. — INCREASE 
OF  IMMIGRATION.  —  PROMISE  OF  PROSPERITY  TO  THE  COLONY.  —  PORTENTS 
OF  COMING  CALAMITIES.  —  A  COUNCIL  OF  TWELVE  APPOINTED 429 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

WAR   WITH  THE   INDIANS. — THE   SWEDES   ON   THE  DELAWARE. 

CHANGE  OF  POLICY  TOWARD  THE  INDIANS.  —  KIEFT'S  CRUEL  AND  STUPID 
OBSTINACY.  —  MASSACRE  OF  INDIANS  BY  THE  DUTCH  AT  PAVONIA.  —  RETALI 
ATIONS  BY  THE  NATIVES.  —  MURDER  OF  THE  HUTCHINSON  FAMILY  AT  ANNIE'S 
HOECK.  —  DISASTROUS  CONDITION  OF  THE  COLONY.  —  APPEAL  OF  THE  PEOPLE 
OF  NEW  AMSTERDAM  TO  THE  STATES  GENERAL.  —  END  OF  THE  WAR.  —  KIEFT 

REMOVED    FROM    OFFICE.  TERRITORIAL   ENCROACHMENTS    OF    RlVAL    CoL- 

ONIES. —  THE    ENGLISH    AT   THE    EAST.  —  A   SWEDISH   SETTLEMENT   ON    THE 
DELAWARE.  —  FORT  CHRISTINA.  —  THE  SWEDISH  GOVERNOP,  JOHN  PRINTZ  .     .  450 

CHAPTER   XVIII. 

VIRGINIA   AND   MARYLAND. 

JEALOUSY  OF  JAMES  I.  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  COMPANY. —  EARL  OF  SOUTHAMPTON 
ELECTED  TREASURER. — PROGRESS  OF  THE  COLONY.  —  MASSACRE  OF  1622. — 
DISSENSIONS  IN  THE  LONDON  COUNCIL. — CHARTER  OF  THE  COMPANY  TAKEN 
AWAY. —  RAPID  SUCCESSION  OF  GOVERNORS  OF  THE  COLONY.  —  LORD  BAL- 


xxxii  CONTENTS. 

TIMORE,    AND    HIS    VlSIT   TO  VIRGINIA.  —  CHARTER    OF   MARYLAND. CECIL 

CALVERT'S  COLONY.  —  ITS  LANDING  IN  MARYLAND  — THE  FIRST  TOWN. — 
Sr.  MARY'S  BLUFF.  —  PURCHASE  FROM  THE  INDIANS.  —  THE  FIRST  CATHOLIC 
CHAPEL.  —  FRIENDLY  RELATIONS  WITH  THE  INDIANS 476 


CHAPTER   XIX. 

MARYLAND   UNDER    LEONARD    CALVERT. 

THE  COLONY  FIRMLY  PLANTED.  —  HOSTILITY  OF  THE  VIRGINIANS. —  DISPUTE 
WITH  CLAYBORNE.  —  ENGAGEMENT  BETWEEN  CLAYBORNE  AND  CORNWALLIS. — 
GOVERNOR  HARVEY  DEPOSED  AND  SENT  TO  ENGLAND. —  MEETINGS  OF  THE 
MARYLAND  ASSEMBLY.  —  TROUBLE  WITH  THE  INDIANS.  —  DISSENSIONS  BE 
TWEEN  PAPISTS  AND  PURITANS. —  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLAND.  —  A  PARLIA 
MENTARY  SHIP  SEIZED  IN  MARYLAND.  —  CLAYBORNE'S  RECOVERY  OF  KENT 
ISLAND.  —  His  RULE  IN  MARYLAND.  —  RESTORATION  OF  BALTIMORE. — DEATH 
OF  GOVERNOR  CALVERT.  —  MISTRESS  MARGARET  BRENT 499 


CHAPTER   XX. 

MASSACHUSETTS    BAY. 
FRESH    EMIGRATION    TO    MASSACHUSETTS.- — A   NEW    CHARTER.  —  ARRIVAL    OF 

HlGGINSON     AND    SlvELTON. TlIE     FlRST    CHURCH     AT     SALEM.  —  TlIE    CASE    OF 

JOHN  AND  SAMUEL  BROWNE. —  THEY  ARE  ORDERED  BACK  TO  ENGLAND  BY 
ENDICOTT.  —  THE  COUNCIL'S  REBUKE.  —  PROPOSED  TRANSFER  OF  THE  GOV 
ERNMENT  OF  THE  COLONY  TO  NEW  ENGLAND. — PROBABLE  MOTIVES  OF  THE 
COUNCIL  IN  PROCURING  THE  PATENT.  —  THE  CAMBRIDGE  CONFERENCE. — 

WlNTHROP    CHOSEN     GOVERNOR.  DEPARTURE    FOR    NEW    ENGLAND.  —  HlS 

FAREWELL  ADDRESS  TO  ENGLISH  CHURCHMEN.  —  OLDHAM  AND  BRERETON'S 
PATENTS. —  SETTLEMENTS  IN  AND  ABOUT  BOSTON.  —  OLD  SETTLERS  ABOUT 
THE  BAY.  —  THE  COMING  OF  ROGER  WILLIAMS.  .  517 


CHAPTER   XXL 

NEW    ENGLAND    COLONIES. 

LAWS,  ECCLESIASTICAL  AND  POLITICAL.  —  JOHN  ELIOT'S  WORK  AMONG  THE 
INDIANS.  —  JOHN  COTTON  ARRIVES  IN  BOSTON.  —  THE  RED  CROSS  IN  THE 
KING'S  BANNER.  —  PERSECUTION  AND  BANISHMENT  OF  ROGER  WILLIAMS. — 
THE  FIRST  SETTLEMENT  OF  RHODE  ISLAND.  —  SETTLERS  FROM  PLYMOUTH  ON 
THE  CONNECTICUT  RIVER.  —  JOHN  WINTHROP,  JR.,  FIRST  GOVERNOR  OF  CON 
NECTICUT. —  HOOKER'S  EMIGRATION  TO  HARTFORD.  —  ANNE  HUTCHINSON  AND 
HER  DOCTRINES.  —  MURDER  OF  JOHN  OLDHAM. — BEGINNING  OF  THE  PEQUOD 
WAR  .  .  538 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS,  YOLUME  I. 


STEEL    PLATE. 
Title.  Engraver.    "  Tofaoe 

CHRISTOPHER  COLUMBUS S.  Hollyer  .     .     Title 

From  Herrera'l8  History  of  America. 

FULL-PAGE    ENGRAVINGS. 

To  face 
Title.  Designer.  Engraver.  page 

SIR  WALTER  RALEIGH .  .       1 

After  the  painting  attributed  to  Federigo  Zuccero. 

A  PRE-HISTORIC  MAMMOTH  HUNT       .  E.  Bayard  .     .     .  Hildibrand      .  .     16 

MOUNDS  NEAR  MARIETTA,  OHIO      .     .  J.  D.  Woodward  .  Meeder  &  Chubb  .     24 
COLUMBUS    BEFORE   THE    COUNCIL   AT 

SALAMANCA E.  A.  Abbey   .     .  J.  Miller      .     .  .  108 

SEARCH  FOR  THE  FOUNTAIN  OF  YOUTH  .  E.  Bayard  .     .     .  Ch.  Barbant    .  .  146 

RIBAULT'S  PILLAR  ON  THE  RIVER  MAY  .  W.  L.  Sheppard  .  J.  Karst      .     .  .  196 

THE  LOST  COLONY W.  L.  Sheppard  .  W.  J.  Linton  .  .  254 

SITE  OF  GOSNOLD'S  FORT      ....  A.  Bierstadt    .     .  W.  H.  Morse  .  .  264 

From  a  picture  in  the  possession  of  Miss  Emma  Hathaway,  Boston. 

LAKE  CHAMPLAIN T.  Moran    .     .     .  E.  Bookhout  .  .  320 

THE  SABBATH  ON  CLARK'S   ISLAND     .  G.  H.  Boughton  .  W.  J.  Linton  .  .  392 

From  a  picture  in  the  possession  of  Robert  Hoe,  New  York. 
LANDING    OF    SWEDES  AT    PARADISE 

POINT T.  Moran    .          .  J.  A.  Bogert    .  .  466 

GEORGE  CALVERT,  LORD  BALTIMORE .  .  485 

After  a  copy,  in  the  possession  of  the  Maryland  Historical  Society,  of  the 
painting  ly  Daniel  My  tens. 


XXXIV 


Title. 


LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Designer. 


THE  MULBERRY  TREE  AT  ST.  MARY'S 

POINT T.  Moran     .     . 

ENDICOTT   CUTTING  THE  CROSS  FROM 

THE  KING'S  BANNER E.  A.  Abbey     . 


Engraver.  Page. 

.  Robert  Varley  .  496 
.  J.  G.  Smithwick  542 


ILLUSTRATIONS  IN  TEXT. 


Title.  Designer.  Engraver.  Page. 

PRIMEVAL  AMERICA Runge Winham        .     .       1 

LONG-HAIRED  ELEPHANT " "  .     .       2 

CARVING    ON    BONE    (Long-haired   Ele 
phant)    Hosier      ....  McDonald     .     .       3 

CARVING  ON  BONE  (Group  of  Reindeer)       " "  .     .       3 

LAKE-DWELLER'S  VILLAGE  (Restored  by 

Keller) " Miller       .     .  4 

SAVAGE  OF  THE  STONE  AGE   ....  Runge      ....  Karst  ....       5 

STONE  IMPLEMENTS Hosier      ....  Walker     ...       6 

Flint  Awl.  —  Swiss  Stone  Axe. —  Spear 
Head.  —  Stone  Celt.  —  Stone  Scra 
per.  —  Bone  Awl.  —  Stone  Dagger. 

EARLIEST  POTTERY u McDonald     .     .       6 

DRINKING-CUP " "  .     .       7 

THE  AGE  OF  ICE Runge      ....  Miller       ...       8 

BRONZE  IMPLEMENTS Hosier      ....  McDonald     .     .       9 

Celt.  —  Bronze  Hair-pin  (Swiss). — 
Bronze  Razor  Knife-blade  (Dennak). 
—  Bronze  Knife-blade  (Danish). 

SCULPTURED  STONE " McDonald     .     .       9 

LAKE-DWELLER'S  LOOM " Miller  ....     10 

ARROW-HEADS  FROM  DIFFERENT  COUN 
TRIES     " Karst  ....     11 

Ireland.  —  France.  —  North    America. 
—  Terra  del  Fuego.  —  Japan. 

A  ZONE  OF  PYRAMIDS " Karst  ....     12 

Egypt.  —  Central  America.  —  India.  — 
North  America. 

DR.  KOCH'S  ARROW-HEAD " McDonald     .     .     17 

EARTHWORKS  IN  OHIO " Karst  ....     20 

ANIMAL  MOUNDS " McDonald     .     .     22 

BIG  ELEPHANT  MOUND " "  .     .     22 

TEMPLE  MOUND  IN  MEXICO     ....        " Miller  ....     26 

ALTAR  MOUNDS " McDonald     .     .     27 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS.  xxxv 

Title.  Designer.  Engraver.  Page. 

POTTERY  FROM  MOUNDS ......  Karst      ...  28 

STONE  AND  COPPER  RELICS  FROM  MOUNDS  .  Hosier     ....  Eastmead   .    .  29 
Axe. —  Bracelets. —  Stone  Arrow  Points. 

—  Stone  Axe.  —  Bronze  Knife.      ' 
COPPKR    IMPLEMENTS    RECENTLY    DIS 
COVERED  IN  WISCONSIN Bobbett     .     .  30 

From  photographs  of  specimens  in  collection  of  Wisconsin  His 
torical  Society.     Selected  from  photographs  taken  under  the 
direction  of  Lyman  C.  Draper  and  J.  D.  Butler. 
Adzes.  —  Arrow-heads.  —  Chisel.  — 

Knife.  —  Awl.  —  Spear-head. 

POTTERY  AND   SUPPOSED  IDOLS    RECENTLY  FOUND   WITH 
HUMAN  REMAINS  IN  BURIAL  MOUNDS  IN  SOUTHEAST  MlS- 

SOURI Roberts ...  31 

From  photographs  taken  under  the  direction  of  A.  J.  Conant  of 
St.  Louis. 

MINING  TOOLS Hosier     ....  McDonald  .     .  30 

CARVED  PIPES Eastmead   .     .  32 

SCULPTURED  HEADS Juengling    .     .  32 

Mound  Builders.  —  Central  America. 

CLOTH  FROM  MOUNDS McDonald  .     .  33 

DISCOVERY  OF  GREENLAND A.  R.  Waud      .     .  Miller     ...  35 

FLOKKO  SENDING  OUT  RAVENS       ...                       ...  Anthony     .     .  37 

NORSE  SHIPS  ENTERING  BOSTON  HARBOR                     .    .    .  Linton    ...  43 

BURIAL-PLACE  OF  THORVALD    ....                       ...  Anthony     .     .  45 

NORSE  RUINS  IN  GREENLAND    ....  Hosier     ....  Nugent   ...  46 

SCOUTS  RETURNING  TO  THE  SHIP       .     .  A.  R.  Waud      .     .  Anthony      .     .  48 

ESQUIMAUX  SKIN-BOAT Hosier      ....  Speer     ...  51 

LEIF'S  BOOTHS A.  R.  Waud      .     .  Anthony     .     .  55 

NEWPORT  TOWER Hosier      ....  Miller      ...  59 

CHESTERTON  MILL Roberts  ...  60 

DIGHTOX  ROCK Eastmead    .     .  61 

STEUBENVILLE  ROCK Roberts ...  61 

THE  SEA  OF  DARKNESS A.  R.  Waud .     .     .  Anthony     .     .  64 

WELSH  BARD ...  Bookhout    .     .  67 

DAVID,  PRINCE  OF  WALES Eastmead    .     .  68 

From  Powell's  History  of  Cambria. 

MADOC  LEAVING  WALES A.  R.  Waud.     .     .  Linton    ...  69 

WELSHMAN Hosier      ....  Miller     ...  71 

MANDAN  BOATS Karst      ...  73 

From  Catlings  North  American  Indians. 

WELSH  CORACLE A.  R.  Waud     .     .  Miller     ...  74 

MANDAN  INDIAN Hosier      ....       "         ...  75 

SHIPWRECK  OF  NICOLO  ZENO    .     .     .     .  A.  R.  Waud      .     .  Anthony      .     .  77 


xxxvi  LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Title.                                                 Designer.                       Engraver.  Page. 

GREENLAND  GEYSER Hosier      ....  Juengling    .  .     79 

AZTEC   CITY A.  R.  Waud      .     .  Miller     ...     82 

CHINESE  JUNK Hosier      ....       "         ...     86 

THE  "FAR  CATHAY"       <T.  Moran      .     .     .  Linton    ...     92 

ASTROLABE Hosier      ....  Karst      ...     96 

PRINCE  HENRY  THE  NAVIGATOR Nichols  ...     97 

From  General  Collection  of  Voyages  and  Discoveries  by  Span 
ish  and  Portuguese,  London,  1789. 

SHIP  OF  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY  ....  Hosier      ....  Eastmead    .  .100 

THE  CHRIST-BEARER Aikens    .     .  .  102 

From  a  Map  of  Juan  de  la  Cosa. 

COLUMBUS  ON  SHIPBOARD A.  R.  Waud      .     .  Bobbett  .     .  .105 

ISABELLA,  QUKEN  OF  CASTILE Nichols  .     .  .  109 

THE  FLEET  OF  COLUMBUS Hosier Miller     .     .  .110 

RECEPTION  BY  SOVEREIGNS A.  R.  Waud  .     .     .  Anthony     .  .  115 

COLUMBUS  ENTERING  THE  ORINOCO       .                        ...                      .  .  119 

COLUMBUS  IN  CHAINS G.  G.  White     .     .  Varley   .     .  .120 

AMERIGO  VESPUCCI Nichols       .  .122 

From  a  portrait  in  Hen-era's  Hisloria  General  de  las  Indias. 

VESPUCCI    AT    THE    CONTINENT 123 

From  De  Bry's  Duae  Navigationes  Amend  Vespucci,  1619. 

PRINTING  OF  VESPUCCI'S  BOOK     .     .     .  G.  G.  White      .     .  Anthony     .  .125 

JOHN  CABOT  IN  LONDON Sheppard       .     .     .  Karst     .     .  .135 

SEBASTIAN  CABOT Nichols  .     .  .  138 

From  the  N.   Y.  Historical  Society's  copy  of  the  original  by 

Holbein. 

FAC-SIMILE  OF  SIGNATURE  OF  AMERIGO  VESPUCCI  ....  McDonald  .  .138 

From  Verhagen. 

CORTEREAL  AT  LABRADOR T.  Moran  ....  Bogert    .     .  .  140 

VASCO  NUNEZ  ox  SHIPBOARD        .     .     .  E.  A.  Abbey      .     .  Bobbett .     .  .  143 

THE  SOUTH  SEA A.  R.  Waud      .     .  Varley    .     .  .  144 

FIRST    EMBARKATION    ON   THE    SOUTH 

SEA "            ...  Bogert    .     .  .145 

JUAN  PONCE  DE  LEON        Miller     .     .  .147 

From  a  portrait  in  Herrera's  Historia  General  de  las  Indias. 

STRAITS  OF  MAGELLAN A.  R.  Waud      .     .  Hitchcock   .  .150 

CLAVOS  AND  ESCLAVOS Sheppard      .     .     .  Varley    .     .  .152 

RETURN  TO  THE  BEACH                                       "                       .  Boo-ert    ,  .154 

O 

UPSET  IN  THE  SURF "        ....  Andrew  .     .  .  155 

DE  SOTO Nichols  .     .  .157 

From  a  portrait  engraved  for  the  Bradford  Club,  of  New  York. 

THE  MUSTER  AT  SAN  LUCAR    .     .     .     .  E.  A.  Abbey      .     .  Varley    .     .  .158 

SACRIFICE  OF  JUAN  ORTIZ Sheppard      .     .     .  Miller     .     .  .159 

THE  INDIAN   QUEEN       ....                         ••                       .  Bobbett.  .  162 


LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS.  xxxvii 

Title.                                                  Designer.                        Engraver.  Page. 

PALISADED  TOWN Hosier Miller     .  .  .  16$ 

From  De  Bry's  Brevis  Narratio,  1591. 

FLEET  OF  THE  CACIQUE A.  R.  Waud     .     .  Bogert    .  .  .  165 

BURIAL  OF  DE  SOTO '•  ...       "        ...  168 

DEPARTURE  OF  THE  SPANIARDS     ...  "  ...       "        ...  170 

FISHING  FLEET  AT  NEWFOUNDLAND.     .  T.  Moran      .     .     .  Miller     .  .  .174 

PORTRAIT  OF  GIOVANNI  DA  VERRAZANO Nichols  .  .  .176 

INDIANS  MAKING  A  CANOE Hosier      ....  Varley    .  .  .177 

From  De  Bry's  Admiranda  Narratio,  1590. 

VERRAZANO  IN  NEWPORT  HARBOR     .     .  A.  R.  Waud      .     .  Bogert    .  .  .179 

JACQUES  CARTIER Nichols  .  .  .  180 

From  the  portrait  in  Histoire  de  la  Colonie  Franfaise  en  Canada. 

SETTING  UP  THE  ARMS  OF  FRANCE  .     .  Bayard     ....  Hildibrand  .  .182 

DONNACONA'S  STRATEGY "             ...  Laplante  .  .  184 

CARTIER  AT  HOCHELAGA E.  A.  Abbey     .     .  Varley    .  .  .  186 

CARTIER'S  DEPARTURE  FROM  ST.  MALO    A.  R.  Waud      .     .  Bogert    .  .  .  188 

FRENCH  COSTUMES  (16th  Century) .     .     .  W.  Waud     .     .     .  Langridge  .  .  189 

ENTERING  THE  ST.  JOHN  RIVER    .     .     .  T.  Moran      .     .     .  Bogert    .  .  .191 

BUILDING  THE  PINNACE A.  R.  Waud     .     .  Fay    .     .  .  .195 

FORT  CAROLINE Hosier      ....  Roberts  .  .  .198 

From  De  Bry's  Brevis  Narratio,  1591. 

ARREST  OF  THE  PIRATES E.  Bayard    .     .     .  Laplante  .  .  201 

FIGHT  WITH  INDIANS "«....  .  .  203 

PEDRO  MENENDEZ Nichols  .  .  .  205 

From  Shea's  Charlevoix's  New  France. 

RESCUE  OF  LAUDONNIERE E.  Bayard    .     .    .  Laplante  .  .  208 

MASSACHE  OF  RIBAULT "         ...         "  .  .  211 

LAYING  OUT  OF  ST.  AUGUSTINE    .     .    .  Sheppard      .    .     .  Anthony  .  .213 

DEATH  OF  THE  SENTINEL E.  Bayard     .     .     .  Barbant  .  .217 

THE  FRENCH  FIFER A.  R.  Waud      .     .  Anthony  .  .  223 

WILLOUGHBY'S  SHIPS  IN  ARCTIC  SEAS     A.  R.  Waud     .     .  Bogert    .  .  .  228 

FROBISHER'S  DEPARTURE "           ...  King       .  .  .  230 

SIR  HUMPHREY  GILBERT Nichols  .  .  .232 

VIEW  ON  COAST  NEAR  TORQUAY  .     .     .  A.  R.  Waud     .     .  Bogert    .  .  .  233 

DARTMOUTH  HARBOR "          ...        "       ...  234 

SIR  HUMPHREY  GILBERT  READING  HIS 

COMMISSION Fredericks    .     .     .  Bobbett  .  .  .237 

WRECK  OF  THE  "DELIGHT"      .     .     .     .  A.  R.  Waud     .     .  Anthony  .  .  238 

SIR  WALTER  RALEIGH       Nichols  .  .  .  240 

From  a  portrait  in  Prince's   Worthies  of  Devon. 

LANDING  ON  THE  ISLAND T.  Moran     .     .     .  Anthony  .  .  242 

LORD  AND  LADY  OF  SECOTAN  ....  Hosier      ....  Winham  .  .  244 

From  De  Bry's  Admiranda  Narratio,  1590. 

QUEEN  ELIZABETH  OF  ENGLAND Walker  .  .  .  245 

From  an  original  by  Zuccero  in  Lodge's  Portraits. 


xxxviii  LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Title.  Designer.  Engraver.  Page. 

SIGNATURE  OF  RALPH  LANE McDonald    .     ,  246 

AN  INDIAN  VILLAGE Hosier Aikens     .     .     .  248 

From  De  Bry's  Admiranda  Narratio,  1590. 

TOBACCO  PLANT "        ...  250 

BARTHOLOMEW  GILBERT'S  DEATH   .     .  Sheppard .     .     .     .  Linton     .     .     .  260 

SIGNATURE  OF  QUEEN  ELIZABETH 261 

SIGNATURE  OF  SIR  WALTER  RALEIGH 261 

ENTRANCE  TO  CHESAPEAKE  BAY     .     .  T.  Moran  ....  Mecder    .     .        262 

PROVINCETOWN A.  R.  Waud  .     .     .  McCracken  .     .  263 

JAMES  I Nichols     .     .     .  268 

From  a  portrait  in  Goodman's  History  of  Court  of  James  I. 
JOHN  SMITH ' "         ...  269 

From  Smith's  Map  in  his  General  History  of  Virginia. 
Fac-simile. 

NEWPORT'S  EMBARKATION Sheppard  ....  Varley     .     .     .  271 

DEPOSITION  OF  WINGFIELD      ....  E.  A.  Abbey .     .     .  Bobbett    .     .     .  277 
JOHN  SMITH  TAKEN  PRISONER Richardson  .     .  280 

From  Smith's  General  History.     Fac-simile. 

POCAHONTAS    SAVING  LlFE   OF  SMITH "  .      .    282 

From  Smith's  General  History.     Fac-simile. 

POWHATAN    AND    HIS    WlVES "  .       .    284 

From  Smith's  General  History.     Fac-simile. 

CORONATION  OF  POWHATAN     ....  Sol  Eytinge  .     .     .  J.  P.  Davis  .     .  288 
TAKING  KING  OF  PAMUNKEY  PRISONER Richardson  .     .  290 

From  Smith's  General  History. 

SIGNATURE  OP  SIR  THOMAS  GATES 292 

SIGNATURE  OF  WILLIAM  STRACHEY 292 

WRECK  OF  THE  "  SEA  ADVENTURE"      .  A.  R.  Waud     .     .  King    ....  293 

SIGNATURE  OF  GEORGE  PERCY 295 

SIGNATURE  OF  LORD  DE  LA  WARRE 296 

ARRIVAL  OF  DE  LA  WARRE    ....  Sheppard     .     .     .  Smithwyck  .     .297 

THE  IDLE  COLONISTS Fredericks    .     .     .  Bobbett    .     .     .  299 

POCAHONTAS Hosier Eastmead     .     .  303 

PRESENTATION    OF     POCAHONTAS    AT 

COURT Sol  Eytinge  .     .     .  J.  P.  Davis  .     .  304 

SIGNATURE  OF  JAMES  1 307 

INDIANS  AT  A  PORTAGE Sheppard       .     .     .  W.  J.  Linton    .  308 

SAMUEL  DE  CHAMPLAIN Hosier      ....   Aikens      .     .     .312 

From  portrait  in  (Euvres-de  Champlain,  Quebec,  1870. 

SIGNATURE  OF  CHAMPLAIN 313 

THE  MOUTH  OF  THE  KENNEBEC  .     .     .   W.  Waud    .     .     .  W.  J.  Linton    .  315 

INDIANS  IN   LONDON Cary    .     .     .     .     ,  Varley     .     .     .317 

MEETING    OF    NAHANADA   AND     SKIT- 

WARROES Sheppard     .     .     .  Bogert     .     .     .318 

SETTING  DOGS  ON  THE  INDIANS  ...          "  ...        "         ...  320 

GREAT  HEAD T.  Moran    .     .     .  Bookhout      .     .   323 

BAR  HARBOR     ....  "  .  Hitchcock         .  324 


LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS.  xxxix 

Title.  Designer.  Engraver.  Page. 

SOMES'S  SOUXD T.  Moran  .     .     .  Anthony        .     .  325 

ARGALL'S  ATTACK  ON  THE  FRENCH     .    Sheppard  .     .     .   Gray    ....  326 

COD-FISHING Perkins     .     .     .  Andrew     .     .     .  328 

RICHARD  VINES  AT  CRAWFORD  NOTCH  Waud    ....  Anthony  .     .     .330 

SIGNATURE  OF  FERDINANDO  GORGES ;j32 

VIEW   AT    THE    MOUTH    OF    THE    Pis- 

CATAQUA T.  Moran  .     .     .  Varley ....  334 

MEDAL  [Time  of  Charles  V.]  .  .  .  .  Hosier  ....  Aikens  .  .  .  340 
DUTCH  SHIPPING  [16th  Century]  .  .  .  A.  R.  Waud  .  .  Varley  .  .  .  342 
BARENTZ  AT  NOVA  ZEMBLA  ....  "  .  .  Bookhout .  .  .  344 

HUDSON'S    ATTACK    ON     THE     INDIAN 

VILLAGE Sol  Eytinge     .     .   Andrew    .     .     .  349 

THE  APPROACH  TO  THE  NARROWS  .     .  E.  Perkins      .     .  King    ....  350 

ROBYN'S  RIFT A.  R.  Waud  .     .   Anthony  .     .     .  352 

VERDRIETIG  HOECK J.  D.  Woodward .  Morse  ....  353 

LIMIT  OF  HUDSON'S  VOYAGE  ....  "          .     .  Annin  ....  354 

NAHANT T.  Moran  .     .     .  Bookhout  .     .     .  359 

BLOCK  ISLAND A.  R.  Waud  .     .  Hoey    ....  360 

UPPER  WATERS  OF  THE  DELAWARE    .  W.  H.  Gibson     .  Harley       .     .     .  362 

TRADING  SCOUTS A.  R.  Waud  .     .  Richardson     .     .  363 

FIRST  SETTLEMENT  AT  ALBANY  ...  "  .     .  French      .     .     .  366 
EARLIEST  PICTURE   OF  NEW  AMSTER 
DAM  Hosier  ....  McDonald      .     .  368 

From  a  map  of  the  period. 

FIRST  SEAL  OF  PLYMOUTH  COLONY Maurice    .     .     .370 

VIKW  OF  SCROOBY  VILLAGE  ....  Warren  .  .  .  Gray  ....  372 
FIRE-PLACE  IN  16TH  CENTURY  ...  "  ...  French  .  .  .373 

SITE  OF  SCROOBY  MANOR "          ...        "         ...  374 

SIGNATURE  OF  WILLIAM  BREWSTER 375 

ATTEMPTED  FLIGHT  OF  PURITANS  .  .  Fredericks  .  .  Bobbett  .  .  .377 
CHURCH  AT  AUSTERFIELD,  BRADFORD'S 

BIRTHPLACE Hosier  ....  Karst   ....  380 

LEYDEN Woodward     .     .  Juengling .     .     .  384 

DELFT-HAVEN Hosier  ....  Karst   ....  386 

PLYMOUTH  HARBOR,  ENGLAND  .  .  .  T.  Moran  .  .  .  Varley.  .  .  .  387 
HARBOR  OF  PROVINCETOWN  .  .  .  .  A.  R.  Waud  .  .  Harley  .  .  .  388 
THE  LANDING  ON  CAPE  COD  ....  "  .  .  Langridge  .  .  390 

SIGNATURE  OF  MILES  STANDISH 391 

RELICS    FROM    THE     "MAYFLOWER"   Hosier.     .     .     .  Juengling.     .     .  395 

John  Alden's  Bible.  —  William  Clark's 

Mug  and  Wallet,  etc. 
LANDING  OF  JOHN  ALDEN  AND  MARY 

CHILTON Abbey  ....  Varley       .     .     .  396 

STONE  CANOPY  OVER  PLYMOUTH  ROCK  Hosier  ....  Bookhout  .     .     .  397 


xl  LIST    OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Title.  Designer.  Engraver.  Paye. 

FIRST  BURIAL  PLACE  NEAR  THE  LAND 
ING    Gibson ....  McCracken    .     .  398 

GOVERNOR  CARVER'S  CHAIR  ....  Hosier  ....  McDonald  .  .  399 
VISIT  OF  SAMOSET  TO  THE  COLONY  .  A.  R.  Waud  .  .  J.  P.  Davis  .  .  400 

SIGNATURES     TO     PLYMOUTH    PATENT 403 

CHRISTMAS  REVELLERS Fredericks      .     .  Bobbett     .     .     .  404 

BURIAL  HILL Hosier  ....  Miller  ....  406 

SWORD  OF  MILES  STANDISH 408 

SIGNATURE  OF  WILLIAM  BRADFORD 410 

SITE    OF    FIRST    CHURCH    AND    GOV 
ERNOR  BRADFORD'S  HOUSE      .     .     .   A.  R.  Waud  .     .   French      .     .     .411 

SIGNATURE  OF  EDWARD  WINSLOW 413 

EXPULSION  OF  OLDHAM Abbey  ....   Langridge      .     .415 

BARRICADE  AT  CAPE  ANN       ....         "  ...   French      .     .     .418 

STANDISH'S  POT  AND  PLATTER  .     .     .  Hosier  ....  Maurice     .     .     .  419 

SPINNING  WHEEL "          ...  Karst    ....  422 

FESTIVITIES  AT  MERRY  MOUNT  .     .     .  Fredericks      .     .  Bobbett     .     .     .  425 

PLYMOUTH  ROCK Hosier  ....   Richardson    .     .   428 

AMSTERDAM W.  Waud .     .     .  Langridge      .     .  429 

SEAL  OF  NEW  NETHERLAND  „ 430 

DUTCH  COSTUMES W.  Waud  .     .     .   Langridge      .     .  431 

TRADING  FOR  FURS A.  R.  Waud  .     .  Bogert .     .     .     .434 

INDIAN    TAKING    DOWN   THE    ARMS   OF 

HOLLAND '•  .     .         "          ...  436 

PORTRAIT  OF  DE  VRIES Bross    ....  437 

From  a  photograph  of  an  old  print  in  1st  edition  of  De  Vries's  Voyages. 
VAN  TWILLER'S  DEFIANCE      ....  Fredericks      .     .  Bobbett     .     .     .  438 
DE  VRIES  ON  THE  EAST  RIVER  .     .     .   A.  R.  Waud  .     .  Bookhout  .     .     .  439 

DUTCH  WINDMILL 442 

GOVERNOR'S  HOUSE  AND  CHURCH  .  .  Hosier  ....  McDonald  .  .  442 
THE  OBSTINATE  TRUMPETER  ....  Fredericks  .  .  Bobbett  .  .  .  443 
LANDING  OF  DUTCH  COLONY  ON 

STATEN  ISLAND A.  R.  Waud  .     .  J.  P.  Davis     .     .447 

SELLING  ARMS  TO  THE  INDIANS       .     .  .     .  Langridge      .     .  450 

DE  VKIKS  IN  THE  ICE A.  R.  Waud  .     .  Morse  ....  453 

DINNER  AT  VAN  DAM'S M.  A.  Hallock     .  Anthony    .     .     .  454 

INDIAN  FUGITIVES  FROM  PAVONIA  .  .  Fredericks  .  .  Bobbett  .  .  .  455 
MASSACRE  OF  ANN  HUTCHINSON  .  •  Sheppard  .  .  .  Richardson  .  .457 

THE  BINNENHOF Hosier  ....   Hitchcock      .     .  459 

MARCH  AGAINST  THE  INDIANS  IN  CON 
NECTICUT  Winslow  Homer .  W.  J.  Linton       .  461 

HALL  OF  THE  STATES  GENERAL  .  .  Hosier  ....  Avery  ....  463 
SMOKING  THE  PIPE  OF  PEACE  .  .  .  Sheppard  .  .  .  Bogert ....  464 
COSTUMES  OF  SWEDES W.  Waud  .  .  .  Langridge  .  .467 


LIST    OF   ILLUSTRATIONS.  xli 

Title,  Designer.  Engraver.  Page. 

EARLY  SWEDISH  CHURCH Hosier  ....  Cocheu      .     .     .  469 

PRINTZ  AND  THE  SAILOR Sheppard  .     .     .  Bogert .     .     .     .  472 

TAKING  WARNING  TO  JAMESTOWN  .     .  Warren     .     .     .  J.  P.  Davis    .     .  480 

DESERTED  SETTLEMENT W.  H.  Gibson    .  Harley  ....  483 

SCENERY  IN  THE  CHESAPEAKE      .     .     .   T.  Moran  .     .     .  W.  J.  Linton     .  485 

HENRIETTA  MARIA Bross   ....  487 

From  Lodge's  portraits. 

CECIL  CALVERT  [From  an  old  print] "          ...  489 

COWES  IN  THE  ISLE  OP  WIGHT  .     .     .  Woodward     .     .  Bogert ....  490 

LANDING  OF  THE  COLONY Fredericks      .     .  Bobbett     .     .     .  492 

GOVERNOR  CALVERT  AND  THE  INDIAN 

CHIEF Sheppard  .     .     .  J.  P.  Davis     .     .  493 

ST.  GEORGE'S  ISLAND T.  Moran .     .     .  Anthony    .     .     .  495 

THE  BLUFF  AT  ST.  MARY'S     ....  "  .     .         "  .     .  496 

RETURN  FROM  A  HUNT Woodward     .     .  Mecder     .     .     .497 

MARYLAND  SHILLING      .     .     • 499 

CLAYBORNE'S  TRADING-POST  ON  KENT 

ISLAND A.  R.  Waud  .     .  Richardson     .     .  500 

FIGHT  BETWEEN  CLAYBORNE  AND  CORN- 

WALLIS "  .     .  Bookhout  .     .     .  502 

EXCITEMENT  AT  JAMESTOWN  ....  Fredericks     .     .  Bobbett     .     .     .  503 

CLAYBORNE'S  PETITION "  .     .         "  .     .  507 

INDIAN  ATTACK  ON  AN  OUTLYING  PLAN 
TATION  Sheppard  .     .     .  Harley  ....  509 

CHANCELLOR'S    POINT    FROM    ST.  INI- 

GOE'S T.  Moran  .     .     .  Varley .     .     .        512 

CHURCH  NEAR  THE  SITE  OF  THE  FIRST 

JESUIT  CHAPEL «'  .      .  W.  J.  Linton .     .    513 

FAC-SIMILE  OF  MS.  RECORDS 515 

SHAWM  UT Woodward     .     .  Meeder      .     .     .517 

PORTRAIT  OF  ENDICOTT Nichols      .     .     .  520 

SIGNATURE  OF  ENDICOTT 521 

THE  OLD  PLANTER'S  HOUSE Roberts     .     .     .522 

COLONIAL  RELICS Hosier ....  French      .     .     .  523 

Endicott's  Sundial,  etc. 
SEAL     OF     MASSACHUSETTS    BAY    COM 
PANY     Hosier 525 

PORTRAIT  OF  JOHN  WINTHROP,  SENIOR Nichols      .     .     .  527 

SIGNATURE  OF  WINTHROP 527 

COLONIAL  FURNITURE Lathrop     .     .     .  Marsh  ....  530 

COLONIAL  RELICS "         ...       "       ....  531 

OLD  HOUSE,  BOSTON,  ENGLAND  .     .     .  Hosier  ....  Miller  .     .     .     .533 

MAP  OF  BOSTON  HARBOR 534 

SIGNATURE  OF   ROGER  WILLIAMS    ...         534 


xlii  LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Title.  Designer.  Engraver.  Paye. 

FIRST  CHURCH,  SALEM Hosier  ....  Juengling  .     .        535 

SIGNATURE  OF  JOHN  COTTON 540 

ST.  BOTOLPH'S  CHURCH,  BOSTON,  ENG 
LAND     Hosier  ....  Karst    ....   541 

ROGER  WILLIAMS'S  HOUSE,  SALEM Bobbett     .     .     .   545 

ROGER  WILLIAMS  BUILDING  HOUSE Anthony   .     .     .   546 

SITE  OF  FORT  GOOD  HOPE A.  R.  Waud  .     .  Annin  ....  548 

SIGNATURE  OF  LORD  SAY  AND  SEAL 550 

TEARING  DOWN  THE  DUTCH  ARMS    .     .   Sheppanl  .      .     .  Bogert       .     .     .    550 

PORTRAIT  OF  JOHN  WINTHROP,  JUNIOR Bross   ....    551 

HOOKER'S    EMIGRATION    TO    CONNECTI 
CUT    Sheppard  .     .     .  Bogert       .     .     .  552 

HENRY  VANE 553 

TRIAL  OF  ANN  HUTCHINSON     ....  Abbey  ....  Marsh  ....  555 
RECAPTURE  OF  OLDHAM'S  VESSEL     .     .  A.  R.  Waud  .     .  Langridge     .     .  557 


LIST    OF  MAPS. 


Title.  Page. 

MAP  OF  CAPE  COD  AND  NAWSET  ISLE 41 

THE  ZENI  MAP 84 

GLOBE  OF  MARTIN  BEHAIM,  1492 103 

SEBASTIAN  CABOT'S  MAP,  1544 132 

MAP  OF  VIRGINIA 243 

From  Harlot's  Relation. 

MAP  OF  CAPE  COD 264 

MAP  OF  PLYMOUTH  HARBOR 394 

MAP  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 519 

Fac-simile.     From  Smith's  General  History. 


WALTER    RALEIGH. 
(From  the  jmrtrait  attributed  to  Federigo  Zuccero.) 


Primeval   America. 


CHAPTER  I. 


THE    FEE-HISTORIC   MAN. 

MAN  COEVAL  WITH  EXTINCT  ANIMALS.  —  THE  CAVE-PEOPLE.  —  SCANDINAVIAN  SHELL- 
HEAPS. —  LAKE-DWELLINGS  OF  SWITZERLAND.  —  HABITS  OF  THE  PRIMITIVE  MAN. — 
Two  STONE  AGES.  —  RESEMBLANCE  BETWEEN  STONE  RELICS  OF  Two  HEMISPHERES. 
—  AMERICA  THE  OLDEST  CONTINENT.  —  A  ZONE  OF  PYRAMIDS.  —  TRADITIONS  OF 
A  LOST  CONTINENT.  —  SHELL-HEAPS  IN  UNITED  STATES.  —  A  PRE-HISTORIC  HUNT 
IN  MISSOURI.  —  HUMAN  REMAINS  IN  GOLD-DRIFT  OF  CALIFORNIA.  —  SUPERIOR  AN 
TIQUITY  OF  MAN  IN  AMERICA. 

THE  period  and  the  conditions  of  the  early  existence  of  man  have, 
within  the  last  half  century,  been  the  subject  of  fresh  and  interesting 
investigation.  The  recognition  of  human  relics  in  certain  geological 
relations  has  established  the  fact  that  there  once  prevailed  in  Europe 
a  barbarism  essentially  like  that  belonging  to  the  lower  type 

J  m  .  .  J  .        Antiquity  of 

of  savages  of  our  own  time.     1ms  primeval  state  ot  man  in  man  in  EU- 
that  portion  of  the  world  existed  too  long  ago  to  be  included 
within  the  historic  period  ;  and,  so  far  as  careful  observation  has  been 
made,  similar  evidence  of  the  antiquity  of  the  race  is  found  in  the 


THE   PRE-HISTORIC   MAN. 


[CHAP.  I. 


imperishable  signs  of  human  habitation  and  the  rude  arts  of  savage 
life  in  all  other  parts  of  the  globe. 

Northern  Europe  at  one  period  was  buried  in  an  Arctic  winter  for 
many  centuries.  On  the  ^  summits  of  lofty  mountain  ranges,  great 
glaciers  of;  iqe  an<J  -ghQW='  were  piled,  which  advanced  by  slow  degrees, 
and  cohered,  land.  .avvd.  sea.,  -^hen  at  length  this  long  and  dreary 
period''-dr:e\v-itc)wk'>d'ife.4l6si8,  the  glaciers  receded,  and  the  earth  be 
came  habitable,  then,  although  a  period  of  intense  cold  was  long  con 
tinued,  there  appeared  many  great  and  strange  animals,  now  known 

only  by  their  fossil 
remains.  Among 
them,  wandering  in 
herds  over  the  region 
which  afterwards  was 
shaped  into  the  pres 
ent  continent  of  Eu 
rope,  feeding  upon 
the  vegetation  of  a 
virgin  world,  were 
the  elephant,  with 
long  hair  and  mane, 
a  rhinoceros  clad  in 
fur,  a  gigantic  elk 
ten  feet  in  height, 
with  antlers  measur 
ing  eleven  feet  from  tip  to  tip,  the  cave-bear,  the  cave-lion,  and  other 
ferocious  beasts  after  their  kind,  hiding  themselves  and  their  prey  in 
dens  and  caverns.  In  caves  and  gravel  drifts  in  France,  in  Belgium, 
and  in  England,  man  has  left  the  indubitable  witnesses  of  his  life,  in 
association  with  the  bones  of  these  extinct  animals,  of  which  whole 
races  perished  while  he  survived  through  periods  of  successive  sub 
mersions  and  upheavals  of  land,  of  floods  from  slowly  receding  gla 
ciers,  of  alterations  in  climate  due,  perhaps,  to  the  changing  relative 
positions  of  the  earth  to  the  sun,  perhaps  to  the  relative  areas  of  land 
and  sea  in  different  portions  of  the  globe  at  different  periods. 

These  people  who  first  appeared,  or  the  first,  at  least,  who  are 
known  to  have  appeared,  in  Europe,  were  mere  naked  sav 
ages  with  an  instinct  to  kill  and  to  eat,  to  creep  under  a  rock 
as  a  shelter  from  the  cold  and  the  rain  ;  who  in  the  course  of  time 
learned  that  fire  would  burn  and  cook,  that  there  was  warmth  in  the 
skin  of  a  beast,  that  a  sharpened  stone  would  kill  and  would  scrape 
much  better  than  a  blunt  one.  From  generation  to  generation  they 
lived  and  died  in  the  caves  where  they  have  left  the  evidences  of  their 


Long-haired   Elephant. 


The  cave 
men. 


REMAINS  IN   SHELL-HEAPS. 


Carving  on  Bone.     (Long-haired  Elephant.) 


existence ;  and  it  is  a  curious  and  interesting  mark  of  their  progress 
that  some  of  these  troglodytes  in  the  south  of  France  made  tolerable 
carvings  in  bone  and 
drawings  of  various 
animals  upon  horns 
and  tusks  of  ivory. 
Pictures  of  the  long 
haired  elephant  and 
of  groups  of  reindeer 
show  the  possession 
of  that  artist -sense 
which  seems  as  pe 
culiar  to  and  inher 
ent  in  man  as  the  power  to  laugh  and  the  faculty  of  articulate  speech ; 
and  they  prove  also  that  these  artists  were  familiar  with  the  animals 
they  sketched,  of  which  one  is  known  to  the  modern  world  only  by 
its  fossil  remains,  and  another,  though  still  extant,  is  able  to  live  only 
in  latitudes  of  extreme  cold. 

On  the  coast  of    Denmark   there   are  immense   shell-heaps  called 

K  j  okken-Moddings — kitchen 
middings  or  kitch-  RemainsiQ 
en-refuse  -  heaps  —  ^en-heaps. 
differing  little,  if  at  all,  from 
similar  heaps  on  other  coasts, 
all  over  the  world,  except 
that  they  have  been  dug 
into,  turned  up,  sifted,  stud 
ied,  inch  by  inch,  atom  by 
atom,  with  that  sagacity,  pa 
tience,  and  minuteness  which 
distinguish  modern  science.  In  these  are  found,  mingled  with  stone  im 
plements,  bones  of  various  beasts  and  birds  and  shells  of  different  fish, 
the  bones  of  a  certain  species  of  grouse,  —  a  bird  known  to  have  fed 
upon  the  buds  of  the  pine  tree.  But  the  pine  tree  does  not  grow,  and 
has  not  grown  within  the  historic  period,  in  Denmark.  It  is  found, 
however,  in  the  peat-bogs,  thirty  feet  beneath  the  present  surface  of 
the  soil.  Above  these  buried  pines  are  the  trunks  of  the  oak  and  white 
birch  that  followed  the  pine  forests,  flourished  for  centuries,  and  then 
in  their  turn  died  out.  On  the  upper  surface  of  the  bogs  grows  the 
beech,  the  common  forest  tree  of  Denmark  now,  as  it  has  been  so  far 
back  as  either  history  or  tradition  goes.  Thus  forest  after  forest  of  dif 
ferent  species,  to  which  the  climate  and  the  soil  were  adapted,  has  come 
and  gone  since  the  people  of  the  Kjokken-Moddings  fed  upon  this  bird, 
the  capercailzie,  which  lived  upon  the  buds  of  those  buried  pines. 


Carving  on  Bone.     (Group  of  Reindeer.) 


THE  PRE-HISTORIC   MAN. 


[CHAP.  I. 


Nor  are  these  men  of  the  caves  and  of  the  Kjokken-Moddings  the 
only  representatives  of  the  ancient  race  or  races  who  left  their  relics 
in  their  actual  habitations.  In  the  years  1853-54,  two  successive  dry 
seasons  reduced  the  waters  of  the  lakes  of  Switzerland  to  a  lower  point 
than  was  ever  known  before.  It  was  discovered,  first  by  accident  and 
afterward  by  careful  search,  that  dwellings  built  upon  piles  had  once 


Lake-dweller's  Village.     (Restored  by  Keller.) 

stood  in  these  lakes  near  their  shores.  Continued  systematic  and  pa 
tient  examination  of  the  sites  of  these  habitations  proves  that  some  of 
them  belonged  to  an  ancient  people,  and  that,  as  their  relics  show, 
they  lived  in  them,  from  century  to  century,  from  the  earliest  appear 
ance  of  man  down,  probably,  to  the  historic  period. 

With  these  last  discoveries  the  case  seems  complete.  In  the  dark 
caves  of  various  regions,  for  whose  possession  these  early  men  doubt 
less  contended  with  the  cave-lion,  the  cave-bear,  and  the  cave-hyena ; 
by  the  sea-shore  in  the  Kjokken-Moddings  of  Denmark;  in  the  huts 
of  the  Lake  region  where  they  put  water  between  themselves  and  all 
danger  from  wild  beasts  or  other  enemies,  their  history  is  read  in  the 
simple  implements  of  the  infancy  and  childhood  of  the  race. 

When  the  human  creature  learned  that  he  could  avail  himself  of 
his  hands  in  a  way  and  witli  an  intelligent  purpose  to  which 

Implements  .  •         i    i  r        t  •   t 

of  the  prim-  no  other  animal  had  attained,  and  of  which  mere  paws  and 
claws  seemed  incapable,  his  first  use,  probably,  of  that  dis 
covery  was.  to  hurl  a  stick  or  a  stone  at  an  enemy  or  a  wild  beast  in 


IMPLEMENTS  OF  THE   STONE  AGE.  5 

defence  or  attack.  Observation  and  experience  would  soon  lead  him 
to  some  contrivance  better  than  a  mere  missile,  and  to  combine  the 
stick  and  the  stone  into  an  artificial  weapon.  So,  also,  from  bruising 
or  crushing  with  a  pebble,  the  transition  is  equally  natural  to  a  rude 


Savage  of  the  Stone  Age. 

hammer  or  hatchet,  —  the  stone  prepared,  in  some  way,  to  receive  a 
handle,  or  sharpened  at  one  end  to  an  edge,  so  that  a  blow  could  be 
struck  to  break  or  cut  with  careful  limitations.  In  the  first  period  of 
this  early  age,  therefore,  when  man  is  supposed  to  have  begun  to  learn 
that  he  had  the  faculty  of  invention  which  might  make  him  superior 
to  all  other  animals,  are  found  the  first  rude  weapons  and  implements, 
arrow-heads  and  spear-heads,  knives,  hatchets,  hammers,  and  tools 
sharpened  to  edges  of  different  shapes  and  for  various  purposes,  all 
made  of  stone  or  bone,  but  all  only  roughly  chipped,  unground,  and 
unpolished. 

It  must  have  taken  generations,  it  may  have  taken  centuries,  before 
even  this  much  of  culture  was  secured  by  the  man,  whose  wants  were 
few,  whose  intellect  was  as  feeble  as  the  intellect  of  a  modern  child, 
but  whose  mere  brute  force  of  muscular  strength  and  whose  power  of 
endurance  were  probably  so  great  as  alone  to  suffice,  for  the  most 
part,  to  satisfy  all  his  wants.  Certainly,  as  the  relics  he  has  left  be 
hind  him  show,  a  long  time  elapsed  before  he  much  improved  his  con 
dition.  Slowly  and  gradually  he  added  to  the  number  of  his  tools,  and 
improved  upon  their  shape  and  capability.  Among  the  most  common 


6 


THE   PRE-HISTORIC  MAN. 


[CHAP.  I. 


of  these  improved  implements  is  what  the  antiquary  calls  a  celt  — 
celtis,  a  chisel  —  and  which  may  have  been  used  either  as  a  chisel,  a 
hatchet,  or  an  adze  ;  he  contrived  a  scraper,  with  which  he  cleaned 


Stone  Implements. 

Fig.  1,  flint  awl.     2,  Swiss  stone  axe.     3,  spear-head.    4,  stone  celt.    5,  stone  scraper.     6,  bone  awl. 

7,  stone  dagger. 

the  adhering  flesh  from  the  skins  of  the  beasts  he  killed  ;  he  invented 
bodkins  and  needles  of  bone,  to  pass  through  them  the  sinews  that 
served  for  thread  when  he  made  clothing  of  these  skins ;  and  he  fash 
ioned  harpoons  for  fishing.  To  his  offensive  weapons  he  added  dag 
gers  ;  his  axe  he  improved  in  size  and  shape;  and  he  cut  jagged  teeth 
in  long  flakes  of  flint  for  saws.  Such  of  these  implements  as  were  for 

use  once  or  twice  only  in  war  or  in  the 
chase,  or  for  rough  and  infrequent  purposes, 
he  left  still  rudely  chipped. 

But  with  the  exercise  of  the  inventive 
power  came  the  sense  of  beauty,  the  con 
sciousness  of  increased  effectiveness  in  the 
perfection  of  a  tool,  and  perhaps  the  de 
velopment  of  a  new  satisfaction  in  the  per 
manent  possession  of  personal  property  of 
his  own  creation.  Then  he  was  no  longer 
Earnest  Pottery.  content  with  the  rough  pebble  that  he 

picked  up  on  the  beach,  but  sought  for  better  material ;  he  studied  the 
grain  and  the  cleavage  of  different  flints  and  obsidians  ;  bestowed  time 


THE   PRIMITIVE  MAN.  7 

and  much  labor  upon  the  perfecting  of  his  implements ;  contrived  new 
and  more  convenient  handles  :  gave  grace  and  outline  to  their  shapes  ; 
ground  their  edges  to  keen  sharpness,  and 
polished  them  with  studious  care.  So  in 
the  lapse  of  centuries  he  attained  at  length 
to  the  age  of  Polished  Stone.  With  it 
come  the  first  evidences  of  the  manufac 
ture  of  a  rude  pottery,  learned,  perhaps, 
by  some  observant  savage  from  the  acci- 
dental  baking  of  clay,  who  conceived  therefrom  a  better  drinking- 
cup,  or  vessel  to  hold  his  food,  than  a  clam-shell  or  the  hollow  of  his 
hand.1 

From  all  the  varied  relics  of  the  man  of  the  early,  and  so  far  as 
is  yet  known  the  earliest  epoch,  the  ethnologist  has  deduced  His  mode  of 
that  he  was  of  small  brains,  retreating  forehead,  projecting  Ufe> 
jaws,  low  in  intellect,  but  of  great  strength  of  bone  and  muscle, 
which  enabled  him  to  encounter  and  overcome  the  formidable  dangers 
of  his  time.  He  lived  near  the  sea-shore  or  on  the  banks  of  lakes 
and  rivers,  from  which  he  drew,  in  part,  his  subsistence.  A  hunter 
and  fisherman,  compelled  to  a  constant  struggle  for  bare  subsistence, 
he  did  not  at  first  cultivate  the  earth,  and  it  is  doubted  if  even  he 
bestowed  much  labor  upon  gathering  the  fruits  and  vegetables  which 
nature  unassisted  might  have  afforded  him.  His  food  was  flesh  ;  the 
incisors  of  the  jaws  that  have  been  found  are,  like  those  of  the  Esqui 
maux  of  the  present  day,  worn  smooth,  and  it  is  surmised  that,  like 
that  people,  he  preferred  to  eat  raw — perhaps  because  he  was  slow  in 
learning  how  to  cook  —  the  flesh  of  the  animals  he  killed.  His  front 
teeth  did  not  overlap  as  ours  do,  but  met  one  another  like  those  of  the 
Greenlanders,  and  he  could  therefore  the  more  easily  tear  and  gnaw 
the  flesh  from  the  bones.2  Sometimes  on  the  bones  of  children,  as  well 
as  of  adults,  the  marks  of  such  human  teeth  have  been  observed,  and 
it  is  supposed  that  failing  other  food,  he  fed,  not  only  upon  his  enemies 
whom  he  killed  in  battle,  but  upon  those  whom  he  could  only  be  led 
to  eat  by  the  extremity  of  hunger  or  the  mere  fondness  for  human  flesh. 
But  he  was  not  always  a  cannibal,  or  at  least  the  testimony  to  this 
propensity  is  not  always  present  among  the  other  evidences  of  his  way 
of  life.  The  skins  of  the  beasts  he  killed  in  the  chase  or  trapped, 
perhaps  served  for  tents,  and  no  doubt  for  clothing ;  their  flesh  and 
the  marrow  of  their  bones,  for  which  he  seems  to  have  had  a  special 
fondness,  were  his  food.  These  skins  he  dressed  with  his  unpolished 
stone  scraper,  shaped  them  with  his  stone  knife,  sewed  them  with 

1  See  Tylor,  Lubbock,  Lyell,  Vogt,  Dawkins,  Gustaldi,  Busk,  Keller,  Figuier,  et  al. 

2  Pre-historic  Times.     By  Sir  John  Lubbock. 


8 


THE  PRE-HISTORIC  MAN. 


[CHAP.  I. 


threads  of  sinews  in  needles  of  bone.  A  flatness  or  compression  of 
the  shin-bone,  differing  from  the  shape  of  the  tibia  of  civilized  man, 
is  sometimes  found,  which  permitted,  it  is  suggested,  of  a  disposition 
of  the  muscles  peculiarly  adapted  to  men  living  by  hunting  in  a  rough 
and  mountainous  country.1  He  found  a  shelter  at  first  in  natural 
caves,  and  in  huts  of  the  simplest  construction,  partly  because  the  con 
vulsions  of  nature,  however  gradual  they  may  have  been,  were  still 
too  frequent  and  too  tremendous  to  admit  of  any  pretermission  of  the 
struggle  with  the  elements  by  which  alone  he  could  maintain  exist 
ence  ;  or  to  leave  any  leisure  for  the  development  of  the  architectural 
faculty. 

To  the   beginning  of  that  remote  and  long  continued  epoch  has 

been  given  the  name  of  the  Stone  Age,  because  then  men 
and  Ground  had  only  learned  to  fashion  from  the  pebbles  they  picked  up 

at  their  feet,  a  rude  weapon  for  warfare  or  a  ruder  imple 
ment  for  domestic  use.  And  this  era  of  the  childhood  of  the  race  is 
divided  into  two  periods,  the  Unground  Stone  Age  (Palaeolithic),  and 
the  Ground  Stone  (Neolithic)  Age.  But  the  dividing  line  between 


The  Age  of   Ice. 

1  See  Broca  upon  the  Ossemens  des  Azies ;  Busk  on  Human  Remains,  etc.,  in  the  Caves 
of  Gibraltar.  Report  of  the  International  Congress  of  Pre-historic  Archaeology,  1868; 
Dawkins'  Cave  Hunting,  London,  187*1. 


THE   LAKE-DWELLERS. 


these  two  periods  is  so  vague  and  uncertain  that  it  is  thought  by 
some  impossible  to  define  it  in  any  other  way  than  by  the  recurrence 
of  a  second  glacial  era  when  all  Europe  was  wrapped  in  an  Arctic 
winter,  and  buried  in  Arctic  ice,  probably  for  hundreds  of  years.1 

At  any  rate  a  long  period  passed  away  before  these  rude  men 
learned  to  grind  and  polish  the 
stones  which  at  first  they  only 
chipped,  and  it  is  doubted  if 
their  stone  axes  were  pierced  to 
receive  a  handle  till  working  in 
metals  in  later  times  had  taught 
them  a  method  for  the  process. 
For  the  Stone  Age  overlapped 
the  Bronze,  and  even  when  they 
had  come  to  know  how  to  smelt 
copper  and  had  learned  that 
nine  parts  of  that  metal  to  one 
of  tin  would  make  a  combina 
tion  hard  enough  for  a  useful 
tool,  or  sword,  or  spear,  they 

••  i      i  i      j        ji      •  in-          i  Bronze  Implements. 

long   held  to  their  old  imple-   ,,.    ,     ,.    „  ,         ,  .    .   ,„  .  ,    „  . 

Fig.  1,  celt.     2,  bronze  hair-pm  (Swiss).    3,  bronze  razor 
Of    Stone,    nO     doubt,  be-       knife-blade  (Dennak).    4,  bronze  knife-blade  (Danish.) 


cause  of  the  cost  of  material  and  slow  growth  of  skill.     But  when  man 
began  to  smelt  ores  he  began  to  make  history  ;  and  there  is  a  visible 

connection  between  the  Bronze  Age  and  our 
own,  in  traditions,  oral  and  written,  in  in 
scriptions  upon  sculptured  stones,  in  picture- 
writing  in  temples  and  on  ancient  monu 
ments. 

The  Lake-  dwellers,  however,  though  some 
of  them  were  in  the  condition  of  the  earliest 
Stone  Age,  were  generally  of  that  more  re 
cent  period  when  the  continent  had  settled 
into  its  present  form  ;  their  population  was 
numerous  enough  to  gather  into  communi 
ties  sufficient  for  the  felling  of  trees  with 
their  stone  axes  ;  these  trees,  sharpened  with 
the  aid  of  fire,  they  drove  into  the  muddy 
bottoms  of  the  lakes  as  piles  for  the  support 
of  the  platforms  of  their  houses.  With  their  relics,  in  beds  three  feet 
in  thickness,  the  accumulation  of  centuries,  are  found  the  first  evi 
dences  of  agriculture  and  horticulture.  Among  the  charred  remains 

1  The  Great  Ice  Age;  and  its  Relation  to  the  Antiquity  of  Man.    By  James  Geikie.     ]874. 


Sculptured  Stone. 


10 


THE   PKE-HISTORIC   MAN. 


[CHAP.  I. 


Relics  of 
Lake-dwell 
ers. 


Lake-dweller's  Loom. 


of  their  villages,  which  seem  to  have  often  been  destroyed  by   fire, 

are  wheat,  barley,  and  linseed,  ap 
ples  and  pears  cut  in  halves  as  if 
for  winter  use,  the  seeds  of  straw 
berries,  raspberries,  elderberries,  blackber 
ries,  loaves  of  bread,  fragments  of  woven 
cloth.1  But  the  earlier  men  of  the  caves, 
and  probably  of  the  Kjokken-Moddings,  had 
reached  to  no  such  point  of  culture.  Nor 
was  it  till  he  had  attained  to  the  Age  of 
Polished  Stone  that  man  domesticated  ani 
mals.  With  the  implements  of  that  time 
are  found  also  the  bones  of  the  dog,  the  hog, 
the  horse,  the  ox,  the  sheep,  the  goat,  ani 
mals  made  useful  for  labor  as  well  as  for 
food.2 

The  earliest  of  these  peoples  inhabited 
Europe  at  that  remote  period,  when,  as  geologists  believe,  the  lands 
now  called  Italy  and  Spain  were  joined  to  Africa,  and  in 
the  place  of  the  Mediterranean  Sea  were  only  a  few  land 
locked  basins ;  when  the  British  Islands,  as  far  north  as  the 
Shetlands,  were  a  part  of  the  continent ;  when  the  present  bottom  of 
the  North  Sea  was  a  low,  wide  plain  covered,  probably,  by  magnifi 
cent  forests,  through  which  the  Rhine,  with  the  Elbe  and  the  Thames 
as  its  tributaries,  wound  its  way  to  discharge  its  waters  at  length  into 
the  ocean  north  of  Scandinavia ;  and  when  the  western  boundary  of 
Europe  was  far  out  in  the  Atlantic  beyond  the  present  coasts  of  Ire 
land  and  France,  extending  in  an  unbroken  line  from  the  Arctic  Ocean 
to  Africa. 

Was  this  primeval  savage,  as  his  story  is  thus  read  in  the  relics  he 
has  left  behind  him  in  imperishable  stone,  a  man  of  a  dark  or  a  white 
skin  ?  In  what  tongue  did  he  speak  ?  Was  he  the  ancestor  of  any  of 
the  cultivated  European  races  of  to-day  ?  To  these  questions  there  is 
no  satisfactory,  perhaps  no  possible,  answer.  We  only  know  that  his 
condition  was  evidently  not  unlike  that  of  the  dark-skinned  barbarians 
of  our  own  time,  and  that  there  is  no  record  in  history  of  a 

Traces  of  .         i  mi  •  i 

the  pre-his-    white  race  at  so  low  a  point  of  culture.      Ihere  is,  apparently. 

toric  man  •    i  «      i «  •  T-T-I  l 

among  mod-  no  trace  or  his  lineage  in  any  living   European  race,  unless 

it  be  in  the  small,  black-eyed,  dark-haired,  swarthy  people 

of  the  Basque  provinces  of  France,  of  Ireland  west  of  the  Shannon, 

and    of  the    mountains  of    Wales,    who,    it    is    supposed,   may    have 


Geologic 
changes  in 
Europe. 


1  Keller's  Lake  Dwellings.     Desor's  Lacustrine  Constructions. 

2  Cave  Hunting,  Researches  on  the  Evidences  of  Caves,  etc.    By  W.  Boyd  Dawkiiis. 


SIMILARITY  IN   SAVAGE   RELICS. 


11 


descended  from  Neolithic  ancestors.1  Otherwise  he  either  perished 
in  the  course  of  nature,  like  many  species  of  plants  and  animals  of 
former  eras,  or  was  exterminated  by  a  stronger  and  wiser  people, 
migrating  from  the  East,  who  came  with  weapons  of  bronze  in  their 
hands,  bringing  with  them  that  germ  from  which  has  grown  the  civili 
zation  of  Europe  and  America. 

It  is  a  curious  and  interesting  inquiry  what  bearing  this  new-found 
evidence  of  the  antiquity  of  man  has  upon  the  question  of  the  origin 
of  the  first  inhabitants  of  the  Western  Hemisphere  and  of  the  time  of 
their  first  appearance.  There  is  a  remarkable  resemblance  in  the 
relics  of  all  pre-historic  races,  as  there  is  a  similarity  in  the  rude  works 
of  art  of  barbarous  people  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  in  all  ages. 
So  great  is  this  resemblance,  that,  it  is  said,  a  skilful  observer  of  stone 
implements  could  not,  from  an  unticketed  heap,  tell  within  thousands 


Arrow-heads  from  different  Countries. 
Fig.  1,  Ireland.     2,  France.    3,  N.  America.    4,  Terra  del  Fuego.    5,  Japan 

of  years  or  thousands  of  miles  when  and  where  they  were  made.2  It 
is  only  by  their  positions  and  the  relations  in  which  they  are  found, 
that  it  is  possible  to  assign  to  them  any  value  as  to  their  age,  or  as 
to  the  condition  of  the  people  to  whom  they  once  belonged.  But  as 
they  are,  in  certain  positions  and  relations,  accepted  as  proving  the 
antiquity  of  man,  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  in  one  half  the  world, 
where  they  may  be  as  plentiful  as  in  the  other  half,  they  are  without 
any  such  significance.  However  puzzling  it  may  be  to  distinguish 
between  the  stone-hatchet  or  arrow-head  of  the  modern  Indian  and 
that  dropped  by  some  earlier  savage  before  the  Indian  possessed  the 
land,  it  is  possible  that  such  a  distinction  may  yet  be  clearly  estab 
lished. 

"  First-born  among  the  continents,"  says  Agassiz,  "  though  so  much 
later  in  culture  and  civilization  than  some   of  more  recent 

.  .  Antiquity 

birth,  America,  so  far  as  her  physical  history  is  concerned,   of  American 

has  been  falsely  denominated  the  New   World.     Hers  was 

the  first  dry  land  lifted  out  of  the  waters,  hers  the  first  shore  washed 

1  See  W.  Boyd  Dawkins,  in  Cave  Hunting,  and  in  Fortnightly  Review,  September,  1874, 
who,  on  this  point,  follows  Dr.  Thurnam  and  Professor  Huxley. 
a  Tylor's  Early  History,  etc.,  j,.  206. 


12 


THE  PRE-HISTORIC   MAN. 


[CHAP.  I. 


by  the  ocean  that  enveloped  all  the  earth  beside ;  and  while  Europe 
was  represented  only  by  islands  rising  here  and  there  above  the  sea, 
America  already  stretched  an  unbroken  line  of  land  from  Nova  Scotia 
to  the  Far  West."  l 

If  then  an  antiquity  of  the  human  race,  till  recently  supposed  to 
be  incredible,  be  accepted  as  true,  a  door  is  thrown  wide  open  for 
speculation  the  farther  we  go  back  in  time.  The  hypothesis  of  a 
Mongolian  migration  is  no  longer  indispensable  to  account  for  the 
earliest  appearance  of  man  on  that  half  the  globe  which  the  most 


A  Zone  of  Pyramids. 
Fig.  1,  Egypt.     2,  Central  America.    3,  India.    4,  North  America. 

eminent  geologist  of  this  country  held  to  be  the  older  half.  Com 
munication  between  the  two  hemispheres,  it  is  conjectured,  may  have 
been,  long  ages  ago,  quite  as  possible  in  other  ways  as  in  our  era  across 
the  sea  of  Kamtschatka.  To  account  for  the  resemblance  in  the  works 
of  art,  the  temples,  the  pyramids,  the  hieroglyphics  of  Central  America 
and  Mexico,  to  those  of  Asia,  it  has  been  suggested  that  the  Eastern 
and  Western  Continents  once  approached  each  other  where  the  ocean 
now  rolls  between,  and  that  a  zone  or  circle  of  the  earth  was  at  that 
period  occupied  by  a  pyramid-building  people.  And  to  strengthen  the 
supposition,  it  is  alleged  that  there  are  many  points  of  resemblance 
between  the  Guanches,  the  aboriginal  but  now  extinct  people  of  the 
Canary  Isles,  and  the  ancient  Egyptians  on  this  parallel  zone.2  In  the 
form  of  the  skull  the  Guanches  are  said  to  have  been  allied  to  the 

1  Geological  Sketches,  by  L.  Agassiz,  p.  1. 

2  The  Races  of  Men.     By  Robert  Knox.     London,  1862. 


TRADITIONS  OF  A  LOST   CONTINENT.  13 

Caribs  of  the  Antilles,  and  both  to  the  tribes  of  the  whole  eastern  coast 
of  America  from  its  extreme  northern  limit  to  Paraguay  and  Uruguay 
in  the  south.1  Humboldt  suggests 2  that  the  summits  of  the  Madeira 
and  of  the  Canary  Islands  may  have  once  been  the  western  extremity 
of  the  chain  of  the  Atlas  mountains.  Others  go  farther  and  assume 
that  these  islands  and  those  of  the  West  Indies  are  the  summits  of 
mountain  chains  that  once  crowned  an  Atlantic  continent  which  was 
afterward  submerged  and  disintegrated  by  some  great  cataclysm.  The 
similarity  of  the  flora  on  the  islands  of  the  coast  of  Africa  and  Western 
Europe,  and  those  of  Central  Europe  and  Eastern  America  can  only 
be  accounted  for,  according  to  some  geologists,  by  the  supposition  of 
such  a  continent  before  the  human  period.3  The  bolder  theorists  are 
disposed  to  accept  the  fact  without  the  limitation,  as  the  time  of  the 
destruction  of  such  a  continent,  if  it  ever  existed,  and  the  first  appear 
ance  of  man  are  alike  uncertain. 

In    curious   coincidence  with   these  mingled  facts  and  conjectures 
the  story  is  recalled  which  Plato  says  was  related  to  Solon 
by  an  Egyptian  priest  of  the  island  called  Atlantis,  "larger  an  Atlantic 
than  Asia  [Minor]  and  Libya  combined,"  lying  beyond  the 
Pillars  of  Hercules,  inhabited  by  a  powerful  and  warlike  people,  and 
which  was  destroyed  by  earthquakes  and  floods  nine  thousand  years 
before  his  time.     In  later  times  the  "  Island  of  Antilia,"  the  "  Island 
of  the   Seven   Cities,"    the  "Island  of  the  Holy   Bishop   Brandon," 
placed  midway  in  the  "  Sea  of  Darkness,"  as  the  Atlantic  was  then 
called,  found  its  place  in  the  earliest  maps  of  the  world,  sometimes 
under  one  name,  sometimes  another,  when  the  geography  of  one  half 
the  globe  was  merely  guessed  at. 

These  speculations,  traditions,  and  supposed  fables  are  not  history  ; 
but  it  is  not  impossible  that  in  them  may  yet  be  found  some  aid  in 
putting  together  the  unwritten  story  of  the  early  human  race  on  this 
continent.  It  is  not  indeed  yet  established  upon  unquestioned  evi 
dence  that  man  is  as  old  here  as  anywhere  else  ;  but  that  such  evi 
dence  is  forthcoming  is  hardly  a  subject  of  doubt  now  even  among 
those  slowest  to  believe. 

The  natives  of  North  America,  when  first  visited  by  Europeans  a 
few  centuries  ago,  belonged  as  distinctly  to  the  Stone  Age  as  the  ear 
liest  inhabitants  of  Europe  did  at  an  epoch  too  remote  to  be  accu 
rately  measured  in  years.  It  is  not  easy,  therefore,  to  distinguish  in 
this  country  between  the  possible  relics  of  a  primeval  race  and  those 
of  the  modern  Indians,  where,  whatever  the  difference  of  time  be- 

1  Professor  Retzius  of  Stockholm.     Smithsonian  Report,  1859. 

2  Travels  to  the  Equinoctial  Regions  of  America.     By  Alexander  von  Humboldt. 

3  See  Lecture  by  Edward  Suess,  in  Vienna,  translated  for  Smithsonian  Report,  1872. 
Opinions  of  Professors  Unger  and  Heer,  quoted  by  Lyell,  Antiquity  of  Man,  p.  492. 


14  THE  PRE-HISTORIC   MAN.  [CHAP.  I 

tween  them,  there  was  none  of  culture.  Thus  Lyell  repeatedly  refers, 
in  different  works,1  to  the  shell-heaps  along  the  American  coast  from 
Massachusetts  to  Georgia  as  identical  with  the  Kjokken-Moddings,  the 
kitchen  refuse-heaps,  of  Denmark.  As  witnesses  to  the  existence  of  a 

people  in  an  early  stage  of  barbarism,  these  refuse  heaps  of 
onecoastaofS  shells  on  the  coasts  of  different  countries  are  undoubtedly 

identical,  but  it  may  be  questioned  whether  those  upon  our 
own  are  the  work  of  the  modern  Indian,  or  of  a  race  that  long  pre 
ceded  them,  and  coeval,  perhaps,  with  those  primitive  savages  who  fed 
in  Denmark  upon  shell-fish  which  can  no  longer  live  in  the  waters  of 
the  Baltic,  and  upon  the  birds  whose  food  was  the  buds  of  trees 
buried  now  in  the  bogs  beneath  successive  forests.  Such  heaps  are 
found  from  Nova  Scotia  to  Florida,  upon  all  the  Sea  Islands  of  the 
Southern  States,  along  the  coast  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  upon  the 
banks  of  fresh-water  streams.  Their  number  and  their  size  suggest 
the  former  presence  of  a  large  population  and  its  long  continuance. 
One  upon  Stalling's  Island,  in  the  Savannah  River,  two  hundred 
miles  above  its  mouth,  is  three  hundred  feet  in  length  by  one  hun 
dred  and  twenty  in  width,  and  with  an  average  elevation  of  more 
than  fifteen  feet.2  Did  the  scattered  tribes  of  Indian  hunters  accum 
ulate  these  huge  relics  of  their  summer  fishing?  Perhaps  when 
longer  studied,  and  with  a  definite  purpose,  they  may  shed  new  light 
here,  as  the  shell-heaps  of  Denmark,  the  caves  of  Germany,  France, 
and  England,  the  remains  of  human  habitation  beneath  the  lakes  of 
Switzerland,  have  done  in  Europe,  upon  the  antiquity  of  the  early 
inhabitants.3 

But  where  the  fact  to  be  observed  depends  upon  geological  evi 
dence,  the  question  is  simply  one  of  verification  of  that  evidence. 
This  involves,  ordinarily,  scientific  knowledge  and  accurate  observa 
tion.  Such  observation  and  knowledge  will,  in  the  long  run,  be 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  subject  and  to  dispel  all  doubts,  if  that  is 
possible,  either  one  way  or  the  other.  Meanwhile  the  progress  of  the 
accumulation  of  such  evidence,  whether  more  or  less  conclusive,  is  nei 
ther  valueless  nor  without  interest. 

1  Visit  to  the  United  States.    Antiquity  of  Man. 

2  Antiquities  of  the  Southern  Indians.     C.  C.  Jones,  Jr. 

3  The  late  Professor  Jeffries  Wyman,  of  Cambridge,  who  had  examined  the  structure 
and  contents  of  these  refuse-heaps  with  the  careful  habit  and  rigid  method  of  scientific 
research,  asserts,  in  a  private  letter,  that  no  glass  beads  or  tools  of  metal  have  hitherto  been 
found  in  them,  though  such  articles  were  largely  distributed  among  the  Indians  by  the 
earliest  European  visitors ;  that  some  of  the  older  mounds  are  wanting  in  any  traces  of 
pottery ;  that  no  pipes  or  fragments  of  pipes  have  been  found  in  them  by  him  and  other 
accurate  explorers,  though  smoking  was  the  universal  custom  of  the  Indians  when  first 
known ;  that  trees  have  been  observed  upon  them,  which  showed  by  their  annular  growth 
an  age  antedating  from  one  to  three  centuries  the  landing  of  Columbus ;  and  that  there 
is  no  record,  with  a  single  exception,  in  the  narratives  of  the  early  voyagers  of  these  heaps 
marking  the  dwelling-places  of  the  Indians.  f 


FOSSILS  FOUND   IN  AMERICA.  15 

Thus,  near  Natchez,  Mississippi,  there  was  found  about  thirty  years 
ago,  a  fragment  of  a  human  bone,  the  pelvis,  in  association  with  the 
bones  of  the  mastodon,  the  megalonyx,  and  other  extinct  animals. 
Were  the  man  and  the  beasts  to  whom  these  bones  belonged  living 
at  the  same  time  ?  That  time  was  about  a  hundred  thousand  years 
ago,1  when  the  mastodon  and  megalonyx,  whose  remains  must  have 
been  buried  beneath  the  present  valley  and  delta  of  the 

-,,...        .  •    i          i*  mi          f  11  Fossil  re- 

Mississippi,  were  certainly  alive.  Ine  fissure  at  the  bot-  mains  in 
torn  of  which  the  bones  were  found  was  made  during  the 
earthquakes  of  1811—12,  which  extended  through  a  portion  of  the  Mis 
sissippi  Valley,  heaving  the  earth  up  into  long  hillocks,  and  tearing  it 
open  into  deep  ravines.  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  on  his  visit  to  this  coun 
try  in  1846,  carefully  examined  the  locality  and  these  fossils,  with  a 
stronger  bias,  he  has  since  said,  against  the  probability  "  of  the  con 
temporaneous  entombment  of  man  and  the  mastodon  than  any  geolo 
gist  would  now  be  justified  in  entertaining."2  He  suggested  that  the 
human  bone  may  have  fallen  from  the  surface  of  the  soil,  while  those 
of  the  fossil  beasts  came  from  strata  underneath.  Other  scientific  men 
afterward  adopted  this  suggestion,  though  he  has  since  candidly  ac 
knowledged  that  "  had  the  pelvic  bone  belonged  to  any  recent  mam- 
mifer  other  than  man,  such  a  theory  would  never  have  been  resorted 
to."3 

So  in  New  Orleans,  in  1852,  a  human  skeleton  was  dug  from  an 
excavation,  made  for  the  foundation  of  gas-works,  at  a  depth  of  six 
teen  feet,  and  beneath  four  successive  buried  forests  of  cypress.  Dr. 
Dowler,  into  whose  possession  this  skeleton  came,  believed,  from  its 
position,  that  it  had  lain  there  not  less  than  fifty  thousand  years,  but 
whether  this  be  correct  or  not,  depends  upon  intricate  calculations  as 
to  the  yearly  deposits  of  the  river,  about  which  there  is  great  differ 
ence  of  opinion  among  geologists.  There  is  on  Petit  Anse  Island,  in 
Louisiana,  a  bed  of  almost  pure  rock  salt,  found  in  every  part  of  it  at 
a  depth  of  from  fifteen  to  twenty  feet.  On  this  spot  have  been  disin 
terred  the  fossil  bones  of  the  mastodon  and  the  elephant,  and  under 
neath  them  lay  fragments  of  matting  and  bits  of  broken  pottery  in 
great  profusion.  The  people  to  whom  this  refuse  once  belonged  had 
resorted  to  the  island  for  salt,  before,  it  is  assumed,  the  superimposed 
mud  of  fifteen  or  twenty  feet  in  depth,  and  in  which  the  mastodons 
and  elephants  were  buried,  was  deposited ;  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
doubted  whether  the  whole  mass  of  soil  and  all  it  contained  may  not 
have  been  washed  down  from  the  surrounding  hills,  mingling  together 
indiscriminately  the  remains  of  various  ages. 

1  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  Second  Visit  to  the  United  States,  vol.  ii.  p.  151. 

2  Lyell's  Antiquity  of  Man,  p.  236. 
8  Ibid.,  p.  239. 


16  THE   PRE-HISTORIC   MAN.  [CHAP.  I. 

Evidence  still  more  interesting  and  conclusive  that  man  and  the  ex 
tinct  animals  were  contemporaneous  is  alleged  to  have  been  found  in 
Missouri  nearly  forty  years  ago.  A  Dr.  Koch,  of  St.  Louis,  an  enthu 
siastic,  though  not  a  scientific,  collector  and  exhibitor  of  fossil  remains, 
affirmed  that  in  1839  he  dug  up,  in  the  bottom  lands  of  the  Bour- 
beuse  River,  in  Missouri,  from  a  depth  of  eight  or  nine  feet,  the  bones 
of  a  mastodon,  in  such  juxtaposition  with  human  relics  as 
mastodon  in  to  show  that  man  and  this  beast,  whose  race  is  no  longer 
in  existence,  met  upon  that  spot  in  deadly  hostility.  He 
asserted  that,  when  the  exhumation  was  made,  the  great  bones  of  the 
legs  of  the  animal  stood  erect  as  if  the  creature  had  become  im 
movably  mired  in  the  deep  and  tenacious  clay.  Around  it  had  been 
kindled  a  fire  by  human  hands,  and  in  the  ashes  that  lay  about  the 
skeleton  to  the  depth  of  from  two  to  six  inches  were  scattered  bits 
of  charred  wood  and  half-burnt  bones,  stone  arrow-heads,  stone  axes, 
and  rough  stones,  —  these  last  brought  evidently  from  the  beach  of 
the  river  at  some  distance,  where  in  a  stratum  of  the  bank,  and  there 
only  in  the  neighborhood,  are  similar  stones  still  found.  All  these 
missiles  unquestionably  had  been  hurled  at  the  creature,  whose  gigan 
tic  strength,  stimulated  by  pain  and  rage  and  fear,  the  torments  of 
the  flames,  the  shouts  of  the  pursuers,  the  sharp  wounds  from  their 
stone  weapons,  was  not  enough  to  extricate  him  from  the  slough  into 
which  his  great  weight  had  sunk  him. 

There  are  in  this  case  two  considerations  to  be  borne  in  mind.  If 
man  and  the  mastodon  did  not  live  at  the  same  time,  a  discovery  of 
their  remains  in  the  alleged  relations  is  necessarily  impossible.  But 
there  is  no  inherent  improbability  in  the  story  if  they  were  contem 
poraneous  ;  so  huge  a  beast  might  easily  become  mired  in  a  swamp, 
and  then  be  surrounded  and  put  to  death  by  the  savages  by  such 
means  as  were  at  their  command.1  The  only  remarkable  thing  about 
the  incident  would  be  that  subsequent  deposits  of  earth  should  have  so 
completely  covered  these  fossil  remains,  without  disturbing  them,  that 
they  could  be  exhumed  in  their  original  condition  so  long  afterward.3 

1  Savages  are  alike  in  all  ages  and  countries.     "  The  people,"  —  in  the  Lake  region  of 
Eastern  Africa, — says  the  great  traveller,  Livingstone,  "employ  these  continuous  or  set-w 
rains  for  limiting  the  elephant,  which  gets  bogged  and  sinks  in  from  fifteen  to  eighteen 
inches  in  soft  mud  ;  then  even  he,  the  strong  one,  feels  it  difficult  to  escape." —  Tlie  Last 
Journals  of  David  Livingstone  in  Central  Africa,  p.  143. 

2  See  Article  XXXV.,  Silliman's  Journal,  May,  1875,  by  James  D.  Dana;  which  is  de 
voted  to  a  discussion  of  this  case.     Professor  Dana  considers  Koch's  statement  "  very 
doubtful ,  "  but  his  doubt  is  evidently  as  to  Koch's  truthfulness  and  character,  and  not  as 
to  any  inherent  improbability  in  such  a  discovery,  as  he  says,  "  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the 
geologists  of  the  Missouri  Geological  Survey  now  in  progress  will  succeed  in  settling  the 
question  positively."     And  on  the  essential  point  which  aloue  gives  the  story  anv  impor 
tance,  he  adds  :  "  The  contemporaneity  claimed  will  probably  be  shown  to  be  true  for 
North  America  by  future  discoveries,  if  not  already  established  ;  for  Man  existed  in  Eu 
rope  long  before  the  extinction  of  the  American  mastodon." 


THE   CALAVERAS   SKULL.  17 

At  this  exhumation,  Dr.  Koch  always  affirmed  that  twenty  persons 
of  the  vicinity  were  present ;  others  have  vouched  for  his  integrity 
and  general  truthfulness  ;  l  and  though  he  had  little  knowledge  of 
scientific  facts  and  methods,  and  made  grave  mistakes  in  the  classifica 
tion  of  fossil  bones,  his  experience  and  success  in  recovering  them  was 
greater  than  that  of  any  other  explorers.2  If  such  a  scene,  then,  the 
evidences  of  which  he  claims  to  have  uncovered,  ever  occurred  —  a 
scene  in  itself  by  no  means  improbable  if  man  and  the  mastodon 
lived  at  the  same  time  in  the  same  region  of  country  —  a  picture  is 
presented  of  a  hunt  by  pre-historic  men  on  this  continent  vivid  enough 
to  appeal  to  the  dullest  imagination,  and  more  remarkable  than  any 
similar  incident  yet  found  anywhere  else. 

A  year  later  than  this  asserted  discovery  on  the  Bourbeuse  River, 
the  same  diligent  collector  claimed  to  have  made  another 
which  must  be  considered  on  the  same  grounds.    In  the 
bottomlands  of  the  Pomme  de  Terre  River,  in  Benton 
County,  Missouri,  he  dug  up,  he  asserts,  an  almost  en 
tire  skeleton  of  another  mastodon,  beneath  which  were 
two  stone  arrow-heads  in  such  a  position  that  they  must 
have  been  there  when  the  animal  fell.     They  lay  in  a 
bed  of   vegetable   mould,  covered   by   twenty  feet  of     Dr.  Koch's  Arrow- 
alternate   strata   of   sand,   clay,    and   gravel,   hitherto 
undisturbed,  and  on  the  surface  of  the  ground  grew  a  forest  of  old 
trees. 

Later  discoveries  of  other  fossils  are  not  less  significant,  in  the  con 
troversies  to  which  they  have  given  rise,  of  growing  interest 
in  the  importance  of  the  subject.  In  1857,  the  fragment  manskuiiin 
of  a  human  skull  was  taken,  it  is  asserted,  from  the  gold 
drift  of  California,  one  hundred  and  eighty  feet  below  the  surface  of 
Table  Mountain,  in  association  with  the  fossil  bones  of  extinct  ani 
mals.  More  recently,  in  1867  or  1868,  another  human  cranium  was 
found  in  a  mining  shaft  in  Calaveras  County,  which  Professor  Whit 
ney,  of  the  State  Geological  Survey,  believes  to  have  been  an 
authentic  "  find."  To  all  the  alleged  circumstances  in  regard  to  it 
he  gave  a  careful  examination,  and  his  testimony  is  accepted  as  conclu 
sive  by  many  eminent  scientific  men.3  The  shaft  in  which  the  bone 
was  buried  is  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  deep,  and  was  sunk  through 
five  beds  of  lava  and  volcanic  tufa,  and  four  beds  of  gold-bearing 

1  Pre-historic  Races  of  the  United  States,  by  J.  W.  Foster,  p.  62.     Charles  Kau,  in  Smith, 
nnian  Report  for  1872. 

2  The  Mastodon  giganteus  mounted  in  the  British  Museum  was  found  in  Missouri  hy  Dr. 
Koch,  and  a  representation  of  it,  copied  from  Owen,  is  given  in  Dana's  Manual  of  Geology, 
1875,  p.  566. 

.8  Among  others,  by  the  late  Professor  Jeffries  Wyman. 


18  THE   PRE-HISTORIC   MAN.  [CHAP.   I. 

quartz.  In  this  superincumbent  mass  no  crack  or  crevice  was  appar 
ent  through  which  the  bone  could  have  fallen  to  so  great  a  depth, 
and  the  inference  therefore  is  that  it  was  deposited  in  the  place  where 
it  lay  when  that  was  on  the  surface  of  the  earth's  crust,  and  that  over 
it  in  subsequent  ages  were  piled  up  the  successive  beds  of  gravel  and 
volcanic  cinders.  If  this  be  true  of  these  skulls,  then  the  men  whom 
they  represent  lived  before  the  human  race  appeared  in  Europe,  so 
far  as  is  yet  ascertained;  and  before  the  stupendous  peaks  of  the 
Sierra  Nevada  Mountains  of  California  were  lifted  from  the  sea. 

Though  the  number  of  alleged  facts  bearing  upon  the  antiquity  of 
the  human  family  on  this  continent  are  still  few  and  need  unques 
tioned  confirmation,  the  inclination  of  scientific  belief  is  that  the  evi 
dence  exists  and  will  yet  be  found.1  When  this  shall  be  done  beyond 
cavil  a  new  foundation  will  be  laid  on  which  to  base  the  inquiry  as  to 
the  earliest  people  of  the  Western  World.  However  strong  may  be 
the  probability  of  the  Asiatic  origin  of  the  North  American  Indians, 
behind  them  appears  another  race  which  must  have  been  displaced 
by  that  Mongolian  migration.  If  here  as  elsewhere  there  were  races 
more  ancient  than  has  hitherto  been  supposed,  we  can  no  longer  look 
upon  the  Western  Hemisphere  as  solitary  and  unpeopled,  unknown 
and  useless  to  man  till  he,  grown  old  in  the  East,  was  numerous 
enough  and  far  enough  advanced  in  intelligence  and  wants  to  wander 
abroad  upon  the  face  of  the  earth  in  search  of  a  new  home. 

1  See  ante,  p.  16.     Note  from  Silliman's  Journal. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  MOUND  BUILDERS. 

PROGRESS  IN  CIVILIZATION  OF  NORTH  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  —  PRE-HISTORIC  RACE  IN 
THE  WESTERN  HEMISPHERE.  —  EARTHWORKS  IN  THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  BIG 
ELEPHANT  MOUND.  —  GARDEN-BEDS.  —  MILITARY  WORKS.  —  TEMPLE  AND  ALTAR 
MOUNDS.  —  RELICS  FOUND  IN  THESE  TUMULI.  —  ANCIENT  COPPER-MINING  AT  LAKE 
SUPERIOR.  —  CONNECTION  BETWEEN  THIS  AND  LATER  CIVILIZATIONS.  —  REMAINS  IN 
MEXICO  AND  CENTRAL  AMERICA.  —  SKULLS  FOUND  IN  THE  MOUNDS. 

THE  North  American  Indians  are,  as  a  race,  in  no  higher  plane  of 
culture  now  than  they  were  three  hundred  years  ago.     If 
they   have   any  inherent   capability  for   progress — if  they  AnferiCan 
could,  had  they  remained  isolated  and  unmolested,  have  ever 
raised  themselves  above  the  conditions  of   the  second  age  of  stone 
implements,  that  progress  was  arrested  when  they  came  into  subjec 
tion  to  another  and  a  higher  race.     It  has  been  easy  enough  to  inten 
sify  the  weaknesses  which  distinguished  them  as  savages,  by  adding 
to   these   the   most   sensual  and  degrading  vices  acquired  from  the 
whites  ;  and  in  that  process  of  degradation  has  been  lost  whatever  of 
stern  and  manly  virtue  is  supposed  to  be  the  compensation  in  the 
simple  child  of  nature  for  the  minor  morals  of  civilized  life. 

It  seems  irrational  to  assume  that  such  a  people,  whose  contact  for 
two  centuries  and  a  half  with  the  culture  of  another  race  has  been 
unproductive  of  any  good,  can  have  once  fallen  from  a  semi-civilization 
possessed  by  their  ancestors,  but  of  which  they  have  neither  distinct 
inheritance  nor  even  dim  tradition.  There  is  no  influence  visible  or 
conceivable  to  account  for  a  change  so  remarkable.  They  had  evi 
dently  never  lost  their  physical  vigor  ;  no  enemy  had  ever  before  come 
to  dispossess  them  of  the  soil  which  they  claimed  as  their  own,  or  to 
trample  out  by  conquest  and  servitude  the  feeble  sparks  of  nascent 
development ;  and  no  higher  civilization  had  invaded  and  overwhelmed 
the  feeble  efforts  of  the  childhood  of  a  race.  It  is  to  set  aside  all  the 
facts  of  history,  as  well  as  all  rational  conjecture,  to  suppose  that  a 
race  now  apparently  so  hopelessly  incapable  of  improvement  had, 
without  cause,  at  some  former  period,  fallen  from  the  condition  of  a 
partially  cultivated  people,  to  that  of  savage  hunters  in  a  country 


20 


THE   MOUND  BUILDERS. 


[CHAP.  II. 


Race  in 
America  an 
terior  to 
Indians. 


which  had  become  a  wilderness  through  their  own  voluntary  degrada 
tion. 

But  behind  these  Indians,  who  were  in  possession  of  the  country 
when  it  was  discovered  by  Europeans,  is  dimly  seen  the 
shadowy  form  of  another  people  who  have  left  many  remark 
able  evidences  of  their  habits  and  customs  and  of  a  singular 
degree  of  civilization,  but  who  many  centuries  ago  disappeared,  either 
exterminated  by  pestilence  or  by  some  powerful  and  pitiless  enemy, 
or  driven  from  the  country  to  seek  new  homes  south  and  west  of  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico. 

The  evidences  of  the  presence  of  this  ancient  people  are  found 
almost  everywhere  upon  the  North  American  Continent,  except, 
perhaps,  upon  the  Atlantic  coast.  They  consist  of  mounds  sometimes 
of  imposing  size,  and  other  earthworks,  so  numerous  that  in  Ohio 


Earthworks  in  Ohio. 


alone  there  are,  or  were  till  quite  recently,  estimated  to  be  not  less 
than  ten  thousand  of  the  Mounds,  and  fifteen  hundred  enclosures  of 
earth  and  stone  all  evidently  the  work  of  the  same  people.  In  other 
parts  of  the  country  they  were  found  in  such  numbers  that  no  attempt 
has  ever  been  made  to  count  them  all. 

There  are  no  data  by  which  the  exact  age  of  these  singular  relics 
of  a  once  numerous  and  industrious  people,  living  a  long-sustained, 
agricultural  life,  can  be  fixed.  But  it  is  evident  from  certain  estab 
lished  facts  that  this  must  date  from  a  very  remote  period.  The  chief 
seat  of  their  power  and  population  seems  to  have  been  in  the  Missis- 


GREAT  AGE   OF  MOUXDS.  21 

sippi  Valley.    The  signs  of  their  occupation  are  many  along  the  banks 
of  its  rivers,  but  they  are  rarely  found  upon  the  last  formed 
terraces  of  those  streams,  —  those  which  have  been  longest  Mississippi 

Valley 

in  formation,  and  which  were  the  beds  of  the  rivers  when 
most  of  the  earthworks  were  built.  It  is  very  seldom  that  the  human 
bones  found  in  them,  except  those  of  later  and  evidently  intrusive 
burial,  are  in  a  condition  to  admit  of  their  removal,  as  they  crumble 
into  dust  on  exposure  to  the  air ;  while  bones  in  British  tumuli,  known 
to  belong  to  the  Roman  period  and  to  ages  older  than  the  Christian 
era,  are  frequently  taken  entire  from  situations,  as  regards  soil  and 
moisture,  much  less  conducive  to  their  preservation,  than  those  of  the 
mounds.1  They  are  often,  also,  covered  by  the  primeval  forests,  which 
are  known  to  have  grown  undisturbed  since  the  country  was  first 
occupied  by  the  whites,  and  the  annular  growth  of  these  trees  has 
been  ascertained  to  be  sometimes  from  five  to  eight  centuries. 

But  this,  so  far  from  fixing  the  date  of  the  occupation  of  these 
works,  does  not  even  indicate  the  time  when  they  were  abandoned ; 
for  a  considerable  period  must  have  elapsed  before  the  ground  was 
occupied  by  trees  of  any  kind,  and  before  the  forest,  in  its  gradual 
and  slow  encroachment,  obtained  complete  possession  of  the  ground  ; 
and  then  forest  after  forest  may  have  grown,  and  fallen,  and  mingled 
with  the  soil  through  the  progress  of  many  centuries,  before  the  seed 
of  the  latest  growth  was  sown,  five  hundred  or  a  thousand  years  ago. 
The  first  President  Harrison,  who  was  considered  an  authority  on  ques 
tions  of  arboriculture,  and  who  has  been  quoted  by  almost  every  writer 
on  this  subject,  maintained,  in  an  address  before  the  Ohio  Historical 
Society,  that  a  long  period  elapsed  before  the  growth  which  came  in 
upon  abandoned  cleared  land  became  assimilated  in  kind  to  the  trees 
of  the  surrounding  forest.  For  that  reason  alone  he  believed  the  works 
of  the  Mound  Builders  to  be  of  "  immense  age." 

Even  the  purpose  for  which  they  were  erected  is  often  doubtful ; 
and  one  class  of  them  baffles  all  rational  conjecture.  In  the  State 
of  Wisconsin,  occupying  the  region  between  Lake  Michigan  and  the 
Mississippi  River,  are  many  earthworks  of  a  peculiar  character,  which 
find  few  parallels  in  other  parts  of  the  country,  while  in  the  same 
region  is  remarked  the  absence  of  the  circumvallations  and  immense 
mounds  so  numerous  elsewhere.  The  significance  of  these  works  in 
the  northwest  seems  to  be  in  their  configuration  alone,  though  what 
that  significance  could  have  been  is  altogether  inexplicable. 

Generally,  these  figures  are  in  groups,  though  sometimes  they  stand 
alone  ;  they  represent  animals,  usually  in  relief,  though  frequently  the 

1  Squier   and   Davis:  Monuments  of  the  Mississippi   Valley.     Pre-historic  Man,  etc.,  Dr. 
Daniel  Wilson,  p.  228. 


22 


THE   MOUND  BUILDERS. 


[CHAP.  II. 


reverse,  and  the  figures  are  varied  enough   and   distinct   enough,  to 

show  that  they  were 
meant  to  be  the  effigies 
of  perhaps  every  quad 
ruped  then  known  in 
the  country,  of  birds 
with  outstretched 
wings,  of  fishes  with 
fins  extended,  of  rep 
tiles,  of  man  ;  and  of 
inanimate  things,  the 
war-club,  the  bow  ana 
arrow,  the  pipe,  the 
cross,  the  crescent,  the 
circle,  and  other  mathe 
matical  forms.  They 
rise  above  the  surface  two,  four,  sometimes  six  feet  in  height  ;  the 
Shapes  of  animal  figures  vary  from  ninety  to  one  hundred  and  twenty 


\/V 


Animal  Mounds. 


the  mounds. 


m  }eng^n> 


Big  Elephant  Mound. 


there  are  rectangular  embankments,  only 
a  few  feet  in  height  and  width,  that  stretch  out  to  a  length  of  several 
hundred  feet.  Among  all  these  representations  of  animals  there  is 
no  one  more  remarkable  than 
that  recently  described,  called 
the  Big  Elephant  Mound,  found 
in  Wisconsin  a  few  miles  below 
the  mouth  of  the  Wisconsin 
River.  Its  name  indicates  its 
form  ;  its  length  is  one  hun 
dred  and  thirty-five  feet,  and  its 
other  proportions  are  in  accord 
ance  with  that  measurement.1  It 
does  not  seem  probable  that  the  people  who  piled  up  these  mysterious 
earthworks  could  represent  a  mastodon  or  elephant  if  it  were  not  a 
living  creature  with  which  they  were  familiar. 

In  other  parts  of  the  country  walls  of  stone  and  earth  were  raised 
Objects  of  f°r  defence  ;  mounds  of  great  or  small  dimensions  were 
the  builders.  neape(j  Up  £o  COVer  the  dead,  or  erected  to  their  memory,  or 
set  up  as  monuments  where  some  mysterious  rites  of  incremation, 
or  sacrifice,  or  worship  had  been  celebrated  ;  or  they  marked  the 
former  site  of  temples  or  of  habitation.  The  precise  object  of  the 
builders,  or  how  they  attained  it,  can  often  be  only  guessed  at  ;  but 
that  there  was  a  purpose  connected,  in  some  way,  with  the  civil  or 
1  Smithsonian  Report,  1872. 


EARTH-WORKS  IN   MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  23 

religious  life,  or  the  hostile  or  the  social  relations  of  a  very  numerous 
people,  is  evident.  But  of  these  works  in  Wisconsin  there  is  no  such 
explanation.  It  does  not  seem  possible  that  they  could  have  been 
the  foundations  either  of  dwellings  or  of  temples  for  worship ;  they 
certainly  could  not  have  been  for  defence  ;  they  were  rarely  places  of 
sepulture,  and  no  probable  conjecture  has  as  yet  been  advanced  that 
assigns  to  them  any  conceivable  human  intent.  Yet  they  exist  in 
great  numbers,  scattered  over  a  broad  extent  of  country.  They  must 
have  cost  a  vast  deal  of  labor,  and  they  indicate  the  presence,  when 
they  were  made,  of  a  large  population. 

In  a  portion  of  Wisconsin,  as  well  as  in  some  other  places,  are  found 
earthworks  of  another  kind,  but  quite  as  remarkable,  which,  from 
their  supposed  use,  have  been  called  "  garden-beds."  These  are  ridges, 
or  beds,  about  six  inches  in  height  and  four  feet  in  width,  methodically 
arranged  in  parallel  rows,  sometimes  rectangular  in  shape,  sometimes 
of  various  but  regular  and  symmetrical  curves,  and  occupying  fields  of 
from  ten  to  a  hundred  acres.  It  has  been  suggested  that  these  were 
beds  for  the  cultivation  of  maize  by  a  people  subsequent  to  those  who 
made  the  animal  mounds,  and  who  had  no  knowledge  either  of  their 
origin  or  purpose.  But  they  may  have  been  the  results  of  the  labor 
of  the  same  people  and  parts  of  some  general  design ;  or,  if  they  were 
really  "  garden-beds,"  the  fact  that  they  were  carried  across  the  effigies 
would  show  that  no  sacred  character  attached  to  those  works. 

Elsewhere  works  of  a  similar  character,  though  in  some  respects 
still  a  subject  of  conjecture,  are  better  understood.  Long  walls  of 
earth  and  rough  stone,  often  carried  in  connecting  lines  for  many 
miles,  mark,  if  not  sites  of  towns  or  cities,  at  least  the  presence  of  a 
dense  population.  The  selection  of  these  sites  was  plainly  guided  by 
convenience  of  access  to  navigable  streams  and  the  possession  of  lands 
best  suited  for  cultivation  ;  and  it  has  been  observed  that  the  places 
where  the  remains  of  this  ancient  people  are  most  abundant,  are  those 
which  the  pioneers  of  modern  civilization  selected  as  the  natural  cen 
tres  of  settlement  and  trade.  They  understood  the  advantages  of  sit 
uations  like  those  of  Cincinnati  and  St.  Louis,  and  they  crowded  the 
pleasant  valleys  of  the  Scioto,  the  Miami,  the  Wabash,  the  Kentucky, 
the  Cumberland,  and  others  through  which  run  the  tributaries  to  the 
Ohio  and  Mississippi  rivers,  where  the  bottom-lands  are  broadest,  the 
soil  most  fertile,  and  means  of  communication  by  water-carriage  the 
most  available. 

The  ruins  of  the  works  which  mark  this  occupation  are  generally 
in  groups  ;  the  walls,  however,  are  not  continuous  like  those  Fortiflca- 
of  a   walled    town,  even    where    most    extensive,  but  mark  * 
different  enclosures  devoted  to  various  purposes.     Thus  at  the  mouth 


24  THE  MOUND  BUILDERS.  [CHAP.  II. 

of  the  Scioto  there  are  embankments  which  measure  in  the  aggregate 
about  twenty  miles,  though  the  area  actually  enclosed  in  its  avenues, 
squares,  and  circles,  is  only  about  two  hundred  acres.  But  the  points 
most  capable  of  defence,  where  defence  was  evidently  intended,  were 
selected  with  military  skill.  The  summits  of  hills  were  made  inacces 
sible  to  attack  by  lines  of  circumvallation  ;  peninsulas,  surrounded  on 
three  sides  by  a  deep  stream  or  precipitous  bluffs,  and  only  to  be 
approached  on  one  side,  were  there  made  difficult,  if  not  impossible 
of  access  ;  and  in  these  citadels,  doubtless,  the  outlying  populations, 
in  case  of  danger,  warned  by  the  smoke  or  flame  rising  from  mounds 
placed  on  the  loftiest  hills,  in  sight  of  each  other  for  many  miles, 
found  safe  refuge.  Nor  were  these  walls  made  in  haste,  or  for  a  tem 
porary  purpose.  In  height,  they  vary  from  five  to  five  and  twenty 
feet ;  at  their  base  they  are  often  twenty  feet  and  more  in  width  ;  and 
frequently  outside  the  wall  is  a  moat  measuring  twenty-five  or  fifty, 
or  eighty  feet  in  width,  according  to  the  importance  of  the  position  or 
the  difficulty  of  defending  it.  Military  works  like  these,  built  not  far 
apart,  and  with  so  much  care  and  labor,  enclosing  areas  from  five  to 
about  a  hundred  and  fifty  acres,  in  a  country  no  doubt  thickly  settled, 
indicate  that  this  was  .a  people  skilful  in  military  affairs,  subject, 
probably,  to  frequent  attack  from  a  powerful  and  much  dreaded 
enemy,  but  quite  capable  of  making  a  long  and  sturdy  defence. 

So  far,  seems  plain  enough.  Defensive  earthworks  are  not  uncom 
mon  with  other  savage  or  semi-civilized  peoples,  though  their  complete 
ness  is  a  measure,  in  some  degree,  of  the  density  of  the  population, 
the  supply  of  labor,  and  of  skill  in  its  use.  But  with  these  Mound 
Builders  the  skill  of  the  soldier  and  the  engineer  was  used  for  the  pro 
tection  of  a  people  who  had  apparently  developed  a  degree  of  civil,  and 
perhaps  religious  culture,  altogether  above  anything  that  the  red  man 
has  ever  been  known  to  possess,  or  that  belongs  to  any  merely  barbar 
ous  race.  Their  works  of  circumvallation,  other  than  those  meant 
merely  for  defence,  were  singular  in  design  and,  in  some  respects,  re 
markable  in  construction.  They  are  usually  upon  the  table-lands,  and 
often  in  groups  extending  for  several  miles,  but  connected  with  each 
other  directly,  or  showing  a  relation  by  propinquity,  —  the  groups 
made  up  of  squares,  circles,  and  other  mathematical  figures,  ranging 
from  two  hundred  and  fifty  to  three  hundred  feet  in  diameter  to  a  mile 
in  circuit. 

Near  these  enclosures,  or  within  them,  are  mounds,  some  large,  some 
small,  some  pyramids,  others  parallelograms,  generally  truncated,  some 
times  terraced,  or  their  summits  approached  by  inclined  planes.  Ave 
nues  of  imposing  width,  between  embankments  several  feet  in  height, 
often  connect  these  enclosed  areas,  extending,  in  one  instance,  in  obvi- 


DIMENSIONS   OF  MOUNDS.  25 

ous  connection  from  both  banks  of  the  Ohio  River  for  a  total  length 
of  sixteen  miles.      Other  graded  roads  lead  from  terrace  to 

,i        ,  .-i  ...        Mathemati- 

terrace,  apparently  to  secure  access  to  the  streams ;  while  cai  correct- 
others  still,  so  far  as  can  now  be  discerned,  lead  from  nothing 
to  nowhere,  the  significance  of  the  avenue  being  apparently  in  its 
existence,  and  not  in  its  direction.  The  squares  in  these  works  are 
perfect  squares ;  the  circles,  perfect  circles ;  and  as  some  of  these  are 
a  mile  in  circuit,  there  must  have  been  brought  to  their  construction 
much  engineering  skill  and  knowledge,  and  the  use  of  instruments. 
They  bear,  moreover,  such  relations  to  each  other  as  to  show  unmis 
takably  some  fixed  and  general  design  ;  and  similarity  of  proportions 
in  places  sixty  or  seventy  miles  apart  seem  to  indicate  the  application 
or  some  common  geometrical  rule  to  their  construction.  Thus  in  Ohio 
is  often  found  a  combined  work  of  a  square  with  two  circles,  and  they 
usually  agree  in  this,  that  each  of  the  sides  of  the  squares  measures 
exactly  1,080  feet,  and  the  adjacent  circles  1,700  and  800  feet  respect 
ively.  This  identity  of  measurement  in  similar  works  in  different 
parts  of  the  country  can  hardly  have  been  accidental.  Within  these 
walls,  instead  of  outside  of  them,  are  occasionally  moats  or  ditches, 
and  this  is  accepted  as  conclusive  proof  that  such  works  were  not 
defensive.  They  may  have  surrounded  the  houses  and  estates  of  chiefs 
and  other  men  of  power  and  consideration  ;  they  may  have  been  public 
parks  and  places  of  public  games ;  or  they  may  have  been,  as  is  gen 
erally  concluded  by  explorers,  the  metes  and  bounds  within  which  was 
enclosed  the  ground  held  sacred  to  the  superstitions  and  the  religious 
rites  of  a  people  who  found  room  elsewhere  for  the  duties,  the  avoca 
tions,  and  the  exigencies  of  their  every-day  life. 

These  witnesses  to  the  occupation  of  the  land  by  a  numerous  and 
busy  population  long  ago,  can  only  be  considered  as  the  ruins  which 
mark  the  site  of  that  ancient  habitation.  The  solid  earth  has  with 
stood  the  inroads  of  time ;  whatever  was  perishable  and  once  bore  the 
impress  of  such  degree  of  culture  as  the  people  may  have  acquired, 
has  perished.  In  the  mounds,  however,  we  gain  some  farther  insight 
into  their  character,  though  they  are  themselves  as  remarkable,  and 
almost  as  inexplicable,  as  the  extensive  system  of  circumvallations, 
embankments,  and  excavations  of  which  they  make  a  part.  These 
mounds  are  of  all  dimensions,  from  that  of  Cahokia,  Illinois,  one  of  a 
group  of  sixty  which  covered  six  acres  of  ground,  and  that  of  Seltzer- 
town,  Mississippi,  of  about  equal  extent,  and  others  of  like  imposing 
dimensions,  to  those  of  the  region  extending  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico 
to  the  Valley  of  the  Arkansas,  and  westward  into  Texas,  which  are 
described  as  "•  from  one  foot  to  five  feet  in  height,  with  a  diameter 
from  thirty  feet  to  one  hundred  and  forty  feet,  and  as  numbered  by 


26 


THE   MOUND  BUILDERS.. 


[CHAP.  II. 


Mounds  for 

various 

purposes 


millions,"1  and  innumerable  smaller  mounds  found  in  Missouri.  If 
these  were  the  foundations  of  human  dwelling-places,  the  country 
must  have  been  one  vast  town  ;  and  if  it  is  difficult  to  believe  this, 
it  is  no  less  difficult  to  conceive  of  their  being  raised  in  such  immense 
numbers  and  in  such  close  proximity,  for  any  other  purpose. 

Of  the  character  of  other  mounds,  many  of  which  have  been  care 
fully  explored,  there  is  less  doubt.  They  are  divided  by  Squier  and 
Davis,  and  their  classification  is  usually  followed  by  other  observers, 
into  Altar  or  Sacrificial  Mounds,  Mounds  of  Sepulture, 
Temple  Mounds,  and  Mounds  of  Observation,  though  there 
are  many,  such  as  the  "Animal  Mounds  "  of  Wisconsin  and 
a  few  of  a  similar  character  found  in  Ohio,  and  those  of  the  Arkansas 
Valley,  that  defy  all  conjecture  as  to  their  use. 

The  Temple  Mounds  are  so  called  either  because  there  are  similar 

elevations  in  Mexico  on 
which  temples  were 
erected,  or  because,  hav 
ing  level  summits  which 
may  be  reached  by  ter 
races,  by  inclined  planes, 
or  by  spiral  pathways, 
they  may  be  supposed  to 
have  been  convenient 
sites  for  such  edifices,  or 
to  have  been  used  for 
religious  purposes  with 
out  buildings.  There  was 
certainly  ample  room  for 
either  mode  of  worship 
on  such  a  mound  as  that 
at  Cahokia,  whose  truncated  top  measured  two  hundred  by  four  hun 
dred  and  fifty  feet,  and  on  many  others  in  the  Southern  States  of 
equal  dimensions ;  and  that  they  were  the  sites  of  buildings,  of  some 
sort,  seems  probable  also  from  the  fact  that  there  are  many  plat 
forms  of  earth,  acres  in  extent,  though  only  a  few  feet  high,  —  similar 
in  every  respect  to  the  larger  elevations,  except  in  height,  —  which 
could  hardly  have  been  used  for  any  other  purpose. 

But  as  these  mounds  have  none  of  the  peculiarities  of  those  con 
taining  the  singular  structures  called  Altars,  and  as  they  evidently 
were  not  places  of  sepulture,  their  use  must  have  been  different  from 
either.  As  they  are  usually  found,  however,  with  the  Altar  Mounds 
within  the  enclosures,  it  has  been  conjectured  that  all  the  extensive 

1  Statement  of  Professor  Forshey  in  Foster's  Pre-historic  Races  of  the  United  States. 


Temple  Mound  in  Mexico. 


TEMPLE  AND  ALTAR  MOUNDS.  27 

works  of  circumvallation,  except  those  evidently  erected  for  defence, 
with  the  many  and  various  elevations  enclosed  within  them,  whatever 
their  character  or  shape,  had  some  intimate  relation  to  the  religious 
faith  and  ceremonies  of  those  who  constructed  them.  If  the  grounds 
of  such  a  supposition  may  be  considered  rational  and  sufficient,  —  and 
in  the  absence  of  any  other  theory  it  seems  the  most  obvious,  —  it  is 
only  the  more  remarkable  that  at  a  period  so  remote  that  much,  if  not 
the  whole  of  Europe  was  still  in  the  darkness  of  primeval  barbarism, 
so  large  a  part  of  North  America  should  be  inhabited  by  a  numerous 
population  so  advanced  in  a  civilization  developed  by  themselves,  that 
they  could  expend  upon  a  single  phase  of  life  so  much  evident  reflec 
tion  and  accurate  knowledge,  and  devote  to  it  an  amount  of  manual 
labor  so  immense  and  so  continuous. 

•These  so-called  Temple  'Mounds,  whether  temples  really  crowned 
their  summits,  or  whether  religious  ceremonies  were  performed  upon 
them  under  no  other  roof  than  the  over-arching  sky,  are  in  themselves 
sufficiently  remarkable,  if  only  for  their  great  size.  The  cubic  con 
tents  of  that  of  Cahokia  are  estimated  as  equal  to  one  fourth  of  the 
great  pyramid  of  Ghizeh,  and  of  that  at  Grave  Creek,  Virginia,  as 
nearly  equal  to  the  third  pyramid  of  Mycerinus.1 

But  the  Altar  Mounds  are  still  more  interesting.  They  are  always 
symmetrical,  but  not  always 
uniform  in  shape,  and  in 
height  they  do  not  generally 
exceed  eight  feet.  Unlike 
all  other  mounds,  whether 
used  for  burial  or  as  places 
of  worship,  they  are  laid  up 
in  different  strata  of  earths, 

not  in  horizontal  lines,  but  Altar  Mounds 

in  conformity  with  the  curve 

of  the  surface  of  the  mound.  Of  these  strata,  from  one  to  four,  though 
usually  two  or  three  only,  are  invariably  of  fine  white  sand,  and  be 
neath  the  whole,  upon  a  level  with  the  surrounding  plain,  is  found  a 
hard-baked  hearth  or  basin,  which  explorers  call  an  altar.  In  shape 
these  altars  differ ;  but  that  form,  whatever  it  may  be,  is  always  sym 
metrical  and  carefully  constructed.  They  bear  always  the  marks  of 
the  fires  that  had  been  kindled  upon  them,  and  the  cremation  may 
have  been  of  dead  or  living  subjects  or  of  burnt-offerings  of  animals 
or  material  things.  But  whether  such  fires  were  for  sacrifices  or  were 
only  a  method  of  disposing  of  the  dead,  the  places  where  they  were 
made  were  important  enough  and  sacred  enough  to  require  that  they 
1  Foster's  Pre-historic  Races,  p.  346. 


28  THE   MOUND  BUILDERS.  [CHAP.  II. 

should  be,  not  the  careless  heaping  up  of  earth,  but  the  construction  of 
a  rude  work  of  art.  The  character  is  invariable  ;  wherever  a  mound 
is  found  thus  made  with  successive  strata  of  carefully  imposed  earth 
and  sand,  conforming  to  its  outward  shape,  an  altar  is  beneath  ;  and 
wherever  the  altar  or  hearth  is  found,  if  covered  at  all,  the  alternate 
beds  of  earth  and  sand  are  carefully  laid  over  it ;  all  others  are  un- 
stratified. 

Beneath  these  mounds  are  found  chiefly  the  specimens  of  pottery,  of 

implements  of  war  and 
the  chase,  and  of  do 
mestic  life,  which  al 
ways  indicate,  in  some 
degree,  the  condition 
and  progress  of  the 
people  who  used  them ; 
but  this  curious  fact  is 
dwelt  upon  by  Squier, 
that,  though  the  num- 

Pottery  from  Mounds.  ~  . 

ber  or  such  articles  in 

any  one  deposit  may  be  large,  the  variety  is  limited  ;  a  collection  of 
Keiics  found  pipes  may  be  found  upon  one  altar,  a  heap  of  pottery,  or 
of  arrow-heads,  or  of  pearls,  or  of  copper  tools,  upon  others ; 
but  a  single  kind  predominates  in  each,  with  little  mingling  of  other 
implements.  The  most  plausible  explanation  of  these  structures  is, 
that  they  were  places  of  sacrifice,  with  a  religious  meaning,  for  the 
altars  were,  in  some  cases,  evidently  used  repeatedly  before  they  were 
finally  covered  with  so  much  care.  They  may  have  been  places  of 
human  sacrifice  ;  but  probably  were  not  for  the  burning  of  those  who 
died  from  natural  causes,  as  the  disposition  of  their  bodies  is  other 
wise  accounted  for.  Thousands  of  other  mounds  are  raised  over  the 
remains  of  one  or  two  persons  in  each,  while  the  common  multitude 
received  only  that  ordinary  burial  which  the  immense  accumulation 
of  human  bones  in  some  places  indicates. 

It  is  unfortunate  for  the  archaeologist  that  the  depositories  of  arti 
cles  of  personal  use  among  these  people  were  exposed  to  an  intense 
heat.  Only  stone  or  clay  could  resist  it,  for  it  melted  copper  and 
lead  and  destroyed  almost  entirely  whatever  was  perishable.  But  for 
this  something  more  might  be  learned  than  we  are  ever  likely  to 
know  of  their  habits  and  customs,  and  of  the  advance  they  had  made 
in  arts  of  which  there  are  found  some  indications.  But  there  is  cer 
tainly  enough  to  show  that  they  had  developed  a  civilization  of  a  vig 
orous  and  original  growth,  though  as  yet  in  its  earlier  stages,  and 
enough  to  justify  a  belief  that  there  must  have  been  much  else  in  theii 


RELICS   OF   STONE  AND   COPPER. 


29 


culture  to  answer  to  those  evidences  of  combined  labor  and  abstract 
thought  exhibited  in  their  public  works  of  defence,  and  their  apparent 
devotion  to  some  ceremonial  system.  "  The  art  of  pottery  "  among 
them,  says  Squier,  who  is  peculiarly  qualified  to  give  an  opinion  upon 
the  subject,  had  "  attained  to  a  considerable  degree  of  perfection.  Va 
rious,  though  not  abundant  specimens  of  their  skill  have  been  recov 
ered,  which,  in  elegance  of  model,  delicacy,  and  finish,  as  also  in  fine 
ness  of  material,  come  fully  up  to  the  best  Peruvian  specimens,  to 
which  they  bear,  in  many  respects,  a  close  resemblance.  They  far 
exceed  anything  of  which  the  existing  Indian  tribes  are  known  to 
have  been  capable." 

If  their  arrow-heads  and  hammers,  and  other  articles  of  bone,  of 


Stone  and  Copper  Relics  from  Mounds. 
Fig.  1,  axe.     2,  bracelets.     3,  stone  arrow-points.    4,  stone  axe.     5,  bronze  knife. 

polished  porphyry,  granite,  jasper,  quartz,  obsidian  —  this  they  could 
only  have  got  from  Mexico  —  and  other  minerals,  show  that  they  were 
still  in  the  Stone  Age,  their  implements  of  copper  prove  that  they 
were  gradually  approaching  to  the  age  of  metals.  The  late  Professor 
Foster  believed  that  many  of  their  implements  clearly  show  the  marks 
of  being  cast ;  1  but  if  that  point  needs  to  be  confirmed  by  farther  in 
vestigation,  it  is  at  least  plain  that  they  had  advanced  beyond  the  age 
when  tools  and  weapons  of  stone  are  made  only  by  chipping,  to  that 
of  pounding  a  malleable  metal  into  shape  with  a  hammer.  They 
could  hardly  have  failed  to  observe  the  effect  which  the  fire  of  their 
altars  had  upon  this  material  which  was  superseding  stone,  and  a 
people  so  intelligent  would  not  have  delayed  long  in  availing  them 
selves  of  that  knowledge,  had  their  progress  not  been  arrested  by  some 
sudden  and  violent  interruption. 

The  copper  was  already  in  common  use,  and  extensive  and  syste 
matic  mining  was  established  on  the  southern  shores  of  Lake  Superior. 

1  Pre-historic  Races  of  the  United  States,  p.  259. 


30  THE  MOUND  BUILDERS.  [CHAP.  II. 

The  miners  of  our  time  find  excavations  and  trenches  in  that  region 
from  eighteen  to  thirty  feet  deep,  where  these  primitive 
LakeSupe-  workmen  had  preceded  them,  and  half -finished  work  and 
their  scattered  tools  of  stone,  and  wood,  and  copper,  buried 
beneath  the  accumulations  of  many  centuries  of  vegetable  and  forest 
growth,  attest  at  once  to  their  active  and  intelligent  labor  and  to  its 
apparently  abrupt  abandonment.  So  numerous  are  their  stone  ham 
mers  —  some  of  such  weight  that  they  must  have  been  wielded,  by 
the  help  of  handles  of  withe,  by  two  men  —  that  they  have  been 
removed  by  the  cart-load,  and  in  one  spot  they  were  so  plentiful  as 
to  be  sufficient  for  the  walls  of  a  well.1  In  a  deserted  trench  in  the 
Minnesota  mine  was  found,  eighteen  feet  beneath  the  surface  of  the 
ground,  a  mass  of  copper  of  about  six  tons,  raised  upon  a  frame  of 
wood  five  feet  in  height,  preparatory  to  removal.  From  these  ancient 
mines,  of  whose  workings  the  Indians  had  no 
tradition,  was  supplied  the  metal  used  by  the 
Mound  Builders,  a  thousand  miles  distant  in  the 
Valley  of  the  Mississippi.  From  that  agricul 
tural  region,  probably,  the  miners  came  with 
their  supplies  for  their  summer's  support ;  and 
the  method  of  conveyance  which  took  them  and 
their  provisions  to  the  mines  sufficed,  no  doubt, 
for  carrying  back  the  ore  to  market  across  the 
lakes  and  the  long  land  journey.  They  must 
Mining  Tools.  have  had  boats  of  more  capacity  than  canoes  for 

such  cargoes,  and  better  fitted  for  the  navigation 

of  waters  not  much  less  perilous  than  the  open  sea ;  but  how  they  pro 
vided,  without  animals,  for  the  carriage  of  such  heavy  burdens  over 
hundreds  of  miles  of  land  travel  it  is  not  so  easy  to  understand,  un 
less  they  depended  upon  a  servile  population  whose  presence  seems 
otherwise  indicated  by  the  immense  amount  of  manual  labor  which 
all  their  works  required.  Of  this  copper-mining  the  Indians  had 
even  no  tradition,  and  among  them,  at  the  time  of  European  discov 
ery,  copper  was  only  used,  and  that  rarely,  for  purposes  of  rude  orna 
ment. 

This  dead  and  buried  culture  of  the  ancient  people  of  North  Amer- 
cuiture  of  ^ca->  to  whose  memory  they  themselves  erected  such  curious 
b^fidTn°^nd"  monuments,  is  specially  noteworthy  in  that  it  differs  from  all 
people.  other  extinct  civilizations.  Allied,  on  the  one  hand,  to  the 
rude  conditions  of  the  Stone  Age,  in  which  the  understanding  of  man 
does  not  aim  at  much  beyond  some  appliance  that  shall  aid  his  naked 
hands  in  procuring  a  supply  of  daily  food,  it  is  yet  far  in  advance  of 

1  Wilson's  Pre-historic  Man,  p.  161. 


COPPER   IMPLEMENTS   RECENTLY    DISCOVERED   IN  WISCONSIN. 

[From  the  Collection  of  the  Wisconsin  Historical  Society. ] 


No.    1. — An   Adze,    with  "wings"   for  fit- 


No.  2. — An  Arrow-head,  with  "wings"  for 
fitting  to  arrow. 

No.  3.  —An  Arrow-head,  with  "wings"  for 
fitting  to  arrow. 

No.  4.  —  A  Knife,  with  socket  for  handle. 


No.  5.  —  A  Chisel,  apparently  cast,  the  rough 
ness  showing  sand-mould  and  white  spots  of 
melted  silver. 

No.  6.  —  An  Awl. 

No.  7.  —  A  Spear-head,  11  inches  in  length, 
with  socket  for  handle. 

No.  8.  —  An  Adze. 


POTTERY   AND    SUPPOSED    IDOLS 

RECENTLY    FOUND    WITH    HUMAN   REMAINS   IN   BURIAL   MOUNDS 
IN    SOUTHEAST   MISSOURI. 


OBJECT   OF   THE   MOUND  BUILDERS.  31 

that  rough  childhood  of  the  race;  and  while  it  touches  the  Age  of 
Metal,  it  is  almost  as  far  behind,  and  suggests  the  semi-civilization 
of  other  pre-historic  races  who  left  in  India,  in  Egypt,  and  the  centre 
of  the  Western  Continent,  magnificent  architectural  ruins  and  relics 
of  the  sculptor's  art,  which,  though  barbaric,  were  nevertheless  full  of 
power  peculiar  to  those  parallel  regions  of  the  globe. 

It  is  hardly  conceivable  that  these  imposing  earthworks  were  meant 
for  mere  out-door  occupation.  A  people  capable  of  erecting  fortifica 
tions  which  could  not  be  much  improved  upon  by  modern  military 
science,  as  to  position,  and,  considering  the  material  used,  the  method 
of  construction  ;  and  who  could  combine  for  religious  observances  en 
closures  in  groups  of  elaborate  design,  extending  for  more  than  twenty 
miles,  would  probably  crown  such  works  with  structures  in  harmony 
with  their  importance  and  the  skill  and  toil  bestowed  upon  their  erec 
tion.  Such  wooden  edifices,  for  wood  they  must  have  been,  would  long 
ago  have  crumbled  into  dust ;  but  it  is  not  a  fanciful  suggestion  that 
probably  something  more  imposing  than  a  rude  hut  once  stood  upon 
tumuli  evidently  meant  for  occupation,  and  sometimes  approaching  the 
Pyramids  of  Egypt  in  size  and  grandeur.  These  circumvallations  of 
mathematical  figures,  bearing  to  each  other  certain  well-defined  rela 
tions,  and  made,  though  many  miles  apart,  in  accordance  with  some 
exact  law  of  measurement,  no  doubt  surrounded  something  better  than 
an  Indian's  wigwam.  That  which  is  left  is  the  assurance  of  that  which 
has  perished ;  it  is  the  scarred  and  broken  torso  bearing  witness  to 
the  perfect  work  of  art  as  it  came  from  the  hands  of  the  sculptor. 

Nor  is  this  the  only  conclusion  which  is  forced  upon  us.  These  peo 
ple  must  have  been  very  numerous,  as  otherwise  they  could  not  have 
done  what  we  see  they  did.  They  were  an  industrious,  agricultural 
people;  not,  like  the  sparsely  scattered  Indians,  nomadic  tribes  of 
hunters  ;  for  the  multitude  employed  upon  the  vast  system  of  earth 
works,  and  who  were  non-producers,  must  have  been  supported  by 
the  products  of  the  labor  of  another  multitude  who  tilled  the  soil. 
Their  moral  and  intellectual  natures  were  so  far  developed  that  they 
devoted  much  time  and  thought  to  occupations  and  subjects  which 
could  have  nothing  to  do  with  their  material  welfare  —  a  mental  con 
dition  far  in  advance  of  the  savage  state.  And  the  degree  of  civiliza 
tion  which  they  had  reached,  trifling  in  some  respects,  in  others  full 
of  promise,  was  peculiarly  their  own,  of  which  no  trace  can  be  dis 
cerned  in  subsequent  times,  unless  it  be  among  other  and  later  races 
south  and  west  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 

Doing  and  being  so  much,  the  wonder  is  that  they  should  not  have 
attained  to  still  higher  things.  But  the  wonder  ceases  if  we  look  for 
the  farther  development  of  their  civilization  in  Mexico  and  Central 


32 


THE  MOUND  BUILDERS. 


[CHAP.  II. 


America.     If  they  did  not  die  out,  destroyed  by  pestilence  or  famine  ; 
if    they   were    not    exterminated   by  the   Indians,  but  were,  at   last, 

driven  away  by  a  savage  foe 
against  whose  furious  onslaughts 
they  could  contend  no  longer 
even  behind  their  earthen  ram 
parts,  their  refuge  was  probably, 
if  not  necessarily,  farther  south 
or  southwest.  In  New  Mexico 
they  may  have  made  their  last 
defence  in  the  massive  stone  for 
tresses,  which  the  bitter  experi 
ence  of  the  past  had  taught 
them  to  substitute  for  the  earth 
works  they  had  been  compelled 
to  abandon.  Thence  extending 
southward  they  may,  in  succes 
sive  ages,  have  found  leisure,  in 
the  perpetual  summer  of  the 
tropics  where  nature  yielded  a 
subsistence  almost  unsolicited, 
for  the  creation  of  that  archi 
tecture  whose  ruins  are  as  re 
markable  as  those  of  any  of  the 
pre-historic  races  of  other  continents.  The  sculpture  in  the  stone  of 
those  beautiful  temples  may  be  only  the  outgrowth  of  that  germ  of 
Their  sculp-  ar^  shown  in  the  carvings  on  the  pipes  which  the  Mound 
Builders  left  on  their  buried  altars.  In  these  pipes  a  striking 
fidelity  to  nature  is  shown  in  the  delineation  of  animals.  It  is  reason 

able  to  suppose  that  they 
were  equally  faithful  in  por 
traying  their  own  features  in 
their  representations  of  the 
human  head  and  face  ;  and 
the  similarity  between  these 
and  the  sculptures  upon  the 
ancient  temples  of  Central 
America  and  Mexico  is  seen 

afc  &  glance. 

mi  i  i          i 

Ihere  also  it  may  be  that 
they  discovered  how  to  fuse  and  combine  the  metals,  making  a  harder 
and  better  bronze  than  the  Europeans  had  ever  seen  ;  learned  to  exe 
cute  work  in  gold  and  silver  which  the  most  skilled  European  did  not 


Carved  Pipes. 


Sculptured  Heads. 
Fig.  1,  Mound  Builders.    2,  Central  America. 


SKULLS  EXHUMED   FROM  MOUNDS.  33 

pretend  to  excel;  to  manufacture  woven  stuffs  of  fine  texture,  the 
rude  beginnings  whereof  are  found  in  the  fragments  of  coarse  cloth ; 
in  objects  of  use  and  ornament  wrought 
in  metals,  left  among  the  other  relics  in 
the  earlier  northern  homes  of  their  race. 
In  the  art  of  that  southern  people  there 
was  nothing  imitative  ;  the  works  of  the 
Mound  Builders  stand  as  distinctly  orig 
inal  and  independent  of  any  foreign  in.  Cloth  from  Mounds' 
flueiice.  Any  similarity  in  either  that  can  be  traced  to  anything  else 
is  in  the  apparent  growth  of  the  first  rude  culture  of  the  northern 
race  into  the  higher  civilization  of  that  of  the  south.  It  certainly 
is  not  a  violent  supposition,  that  the  people  who  disappeared  at  one 
period  from  one  part  of  the  continent,  leaving  behind  them  certain 
unmistakable  marks  of  progress,  had  reappeared  again  at  another 
time,  in  another  place  where  the  same  marks  were  found  in  larger 
development. 

There  can  hardly  be  a  doubt  that  there  is  yet  something  to  be 
learned  of  the  character  of  this  singular  people.  Some  recent  ex 
plorers  believe  that  they  find  new  traces  of  their  mode  of  worship  and 
of  their  religious  faith,  and  others  that  new  facts  are  coming  to  light 
from  a  study  of  their  skulls.  Hitherto  but  little  has  been  learned 
from  this  last  source,  so  great  is  the  difficulty  of  recovering  any  com 
plete  crania  from  deposits  where  the  decay  of  all  perishable  things  is 
so  thorough.  Till  quite  recently  the  number  of  authentic  skulls,  that 
is,  of  those  free  from  all  suspicion  of  being  of  later  and 
intrusive  burial  in  the  mounds,  was  less  than  half  a  dozen,  humedfrom 

.  .  mounds. 

Their  shape  and  capacity  show  no  uncommon  type.  But 
those  lately  recovered  from  different  places  in  Illinois,  Indiana,  and 
Iowa  indicate,  like  the  Neanderthall  skull  found  in  a  cave  in  Prussia, 
and  the  Dorreby  skull  of  the  Stone  Age  of  Denmark,  a  very  low 
order  of  intellect.1  General  H.  G.  Thomas,  U.  S.  A.,  has  exhumed 
from  some  mounds  in  Dakota  Territory  a  number  of  skulls  of  the 
lowest  type,  "unlike,"  he  says,  "that  of  any  human  being  to-day 
alive  on  this  continent,"  but  "  like  those  of  the  great  Gibbon 
monkey."2  It  is  easier  to  believe  that  the  mounds  are  the  burial- 
places  of  more  than  one  extinct  race  than  that  their  builders  were  not 
far  from  idiots. 

Future  explorations  may  shed  more  light  upon  this  inquiry.     Man 
is  older  on  other  continents  than  was  till  quite  recently  supposed.     If 

1  See  Foster's  Pre-historic  Races  of  the  United  States,  chap,  vii.,  for  collation  of  the  evi 
dence  on  these  crania. 
a  Sixth  Annual  Report  of  the  United  States  Geological  Survey,  by  F.  B.  Hayden,  p.  656. 


34  THE  MOUND  BUILDERS.  [CHAP.  II. 

older  elsewhere  he  may,  by  parity  of  reasoning,  be  older  here.  We 
are  permitted  to  go  behind  the  Indians  in  looking  for  the  earliest  in 
habitants  of  North  America,  wherever  they  may  have  come  from  or 
whenever  they  may  have  lived.  In  such  an  inquiry,  relieved  of  some 
of  the  limitations  which  have  hitherto  obstructed  it,  we  may  find  in  the 
relics  of  an  early  and  rude  culture  much  to  dispel  the  obscurity  and 
mystery  which  till  within  four  centuries  have  shrouded  the  New  World 
in  darkness. 


Discovery  of  Greenland. 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE   NORTHMEN    IN  AMERICA. 

EARLY  VOYAGES. — DISCOVERY  OF  ICELAND.  —  GREENLAND  COLONIZED  BY  ERIC  THE 
RED.  —  BJARNI  HERJULFSON  DISCOVERS  AMERICA.  —  SONS  OF  ERIC  THE  RED.  — 
LEIF'S  VOYAGE  TO  VINLAND  THE  GOOD.  — EXPEDITION  OF  THORVALD.  —  His  DEATH. 

—  COLONY   OF   THORFINN   KARLSEFNE.  —  FIGHT   WITH    SKR^ELLINGS.  —  SUPPOSED 
IRISH   SETTLEMENTS   IN   AMERICA  —  COLONY   OF  FREYDIS  —  THE   MASSACRE.  — 
GLOOMY  WINTER  AT  VINLAND.  —  ROUND  TOWER  AT  NEWPORT.  —  DIGHTON  ROCK. 

—  THE  ICELANDIC  SAGAS. 

WERE  these  great  Western  continents,  stretching  almost  from  pole 
to  pole,  unknown  till  1492  to  the  nations  who  had  made  the  world's 
history  ?  The  pride  of  human  knowledge  has  for  nearly  four  centuries 
resented  such  an  imputation.  If  facts  were  wanting,  ingenious  sup 
positions  of  more  or  less  probability  were  made  to  take  the  place  of 
facts.  Even  before  Flavio  Gioia  introduced  the  use  of  the  magnetic 
needle  into  maritime  Europe  some  unlucky  vessel  may  have 

"'  J  Pre-Colum- 

been  driven  across  the  Atlantic  and  stranded  upon  strange  bianNaviga- 

&        tion. 

shores  ;  or  some  Phoenician  navigator  who  understood  "  night- 
sailing  "  may  have  boldly  turned  his  ship's  head  to  the  West,  after 
passing  the  Pillars  of  Hercules,  in  search  of  new  fields  of  adventure 
and  of  traffic  ;  or  some  of  the  fearless  navigators  who  steered  into  the 
Sea  of  Darkness  in  search  of  Antilia,  or  the  Island  of  the  Seven 
Bishops,  may  have  landed  for  a  night  upon  coasts  which  some  super 
natural  power  was  supposed  to  guard  from  the  intrusion  of  man.  Or 


36  THE   NORTHMEN   IN   AMERICA.  [CHAP.  III. 

it  may  be  that  the  lost  Tribes  of  Israel  wandered,  through  Asia  to 
the  Northwest  coast  and  were  the  progenitors  of  the  North  American 
Indians  and  the  ancient  Mexicans  ;  that  the  Malays  crossed  the  Poly 
nesian  Archipelago  and  invaded  the  Western  Hemisphere  on  the 
South ;  that  a  vast  army  of  Mongols  came  with  their  elephants,  whose 
bones  are  left  as  a  witness  of  their  invasion  from  Brazil  to  Rhode 
Island  ;  that  the  Apostle  St.  Thomas  preached  Christianity  in  Peru  ; 
or  that  St.  Patrick  sent  Irish  missionaries  to  the  Isles  of  America. 
All  these  theories  have  had  their  advocates. 

But  there  was  one  ancient  people  whose  warriors  were  the  dread 
The  North-  °^  all  Europe,  from  the  North  Sea  to  the  Mediterranean,  and 
whose  long  experience  as  pirates  made  them  fearless  and 
successful  sailors,  who,  there  seems  no  good  reason  for  doubting,  did 
cross  the  Atlantic  from  coast  to  coast,  almost  five  hundred  years  be 
fore  Columbus  stept  upon  and  knelt  down  to  kiss  the  sands  of  the 
beach  of  San  Salvador.  The  Northmen  had  a  genius  for  discovering 
new  countries  by  accident,  and  having  approached  and  settled  within 
a  few  hundred  miles  of  the  coast  of  the  Western  Continent,  it  would 
have  been  strange  rather  than  otherwise  if  such  bold  rovers  had  not 
found  their  way  thither.  They  made,  indeed,  no  permanent  settle 
ment,  and  if  it  may  be  held  as  an  argument  against  the  probability  of 
their  having  made  the  discovery  at  all  that  it  is  hard  to  find  a  conti 
nent,  it  may,  with  quite  as  much  force,  be  urged  that  it  is  still  harder 
to  lose  one,  when  found.  But  here  again  the  Northmen  are  not  with 
out  a  parallel  in  their  own  experience,  for  it  is  certain  that  they  dis 
covered  and  held  Greenland  for  more  than  four  hundred  years,  and 
lost  it  again  for  more  than  two  centuries. 

It  was  by  accident  the  Northmen  discovered  Iceland ;  Naddod,  an 
Theydiscov-  illustrious  sea-rover,  having  been  driven,  about  the  year  860, 
er  Iceland.  UpOn  its  coasts  by  a  storm.  He  called  it  Snreland  —  Snow- 
land.  Four  years  later,  one  Gardar  Svafarson  was  also  carried  thither 
by  tempest,  and  finding  it  by  circumnavigation  an  island,  gave  it  the 
name  of  Gardar-h6lm —  Gardar's  Isle.  His  account  of  it  was  so  pleas 
ant  that  soon  after  Floki,  or  Flokko,  another  famous  viking,  went  out 
to  plant  a  colony.1  Not  trusting  to  the  chances  which  had  befallen 
and  befriended  his  predecessors,  he  took  with  him  three  ravens,  which 
he  was  careful  before  starting  to  have  consecrated  to  the  gods,  and  to 

1  There  is  some  little  discrepancy  as  to  those  first  discoverers.  The  editor  of  Mallet's 
Northern  Antiquities,  Bohn's  edition,  puts  Naddod  first  and  Gardar  second;  De  Costa  — 
Pre-Columbian  Discovery  in  America  —  gives  the  precedence  to  Gardar;  while  Crantz  — 
History  of  Greenland — who  cites  as  his  authority  "  the  learned  Icelander,  Arngrim  Jonas," 
says  Naddok  (Naddod)  was  first  driven  on  the  coast  by  a  storm,  and  that  he  was  followed 
"  by  a  certain  pyrate  whose  name  was  Flokko,"  and  omits  any  mention  whatever  of  Gar 
dar. 


DISCOVERY    OF   ICELAND. 


37 


these  he  trusted  to  guide  him  to  the  land  he  sought.  The  first  he 
let  loose  returned  toward  the  islands  of  Faroe,  which  Flokko  con 
cluded,  therefore,  must  still  be  the  nearest  land ;  the  second,  sent  out 
some  days  later,  returned  to  the  vessel,  which  was  accepted  as  a  proof 
that  there  was  no  land  within  a  raven's  flight ;  but  the  third,  when  let 
loose,  circling  into  the  air,  turned  its  course  at  length  steadily  west 
ward,  and  him  Flokko  followed,  till  he  reached  the  island.  For  one 
winter  he  and  his  colony  lived  there  ;  but  his  cattle  all  perished  with 
cold.  In  the  spring,  when  he  would  have  sown  seed,  thick  ice  still 


Flokko  sending  out   Ravens. 

covered  the  coasts  and  rivers  ;  so  when  the  summer  came  he  sailed 
back  to  Norway,  declaring  that  the  land,  which  he  called  Island,  — 
Iceland  —  was  unfit  for  the  habitation  of  either  man  or  beast.  Ten 
years  later,  however,  another  colony  was  taken  out  from  Norway  by 
the  Earl  Ingolf,  who  sought  in  Iceland  a  refuge  from  the  tyranny  of 
King  Harold  Haarfager,  who  no  doubt  was  a  despot,  but  whose  offence 
in  this  case  seems  to  have  been  some  intolerant  notions  he  held  about 
a  manslaughter  that  Ingolf  had  committed.  The  attempt  at  coloniza 
tion  was  this  time  successful,  and  a  state  was  founded  which  for  sev 
eral  centuries  was  the  most  remarkable  community  of  that  age  for  the 
simplicity  and  freedom  of  its  political  institutions,  for  the  license,  not 
to  say  the  licentiousness,  of  its  social  life,  and  for  the  intelligence  and 
cultivation  of  its  people. 

Greenland  was  discovered  by  another,  almost  inevitable  accident, 
for,  from  mid-channel  between  it  and  Iceland,  both  are  at  the  same 
time  visible.1  Gunnbiorn,  or  Gunbioern,  one  of  the  early  settlers  of 

/   1  Crantz's  Greenland,  book  iv.  p.  245. 


437471 


38  THE   NORTHMEN   IN   AMERICA.  [CHAP.  III. 

Iceland,  was  driven  westward  by  a  storm,  when  he  saw  land  which 
was  held  in  remembrance  for  the  next  century  as  Gunnbiorn's  Rocks. 
Eric  the  Red,  a  man  disposed  to  acts  of  violence  which  he  was  too 
weak  to  sustain  when  resented,  was  compelled  to  find  safety  in  exile. 
Gunnbiorn's  Rocks  seemed  to  him  a  good  place  to  go  to,  and  thither 
he  went. 

In  three  years  he  was  back  in  Iceland,  full  of  glowing  descriptions 
of  this  country,  which  he  called  Greenland,  "  because,  quoth 

Eric  the  Red  •  1 1     i  i    i  •   i  • 

settles  he,  people  will  be  attracted  hither  it   the  land  has  a  good 

Greenland.  »»       TT  n  ) 

name.  He  returned  to  Greenland  with  large  additions  to 
his  colony.  It  was  the  sons  of  this  Eric  the  Red  who  were  the  first 
Europeans,  so  far  as  is  positively  known,  to  set  foot  upon  this  conti 
nent. 

But  this  came  about  by  still  another  accident.     Among  those  who 
followed  Eric  to  Greenland  was  Herjulf,  who  had  a  son,  "  a 

Bjarni  sails  .    .  , ,       „      ,  i?    T»  •          •  T-.  • 

for  Green-  promising  young  man,  oi  the  name  of  Bjarni,  or  Biarne. 
They  were  both  in  the  habit  of  making  trading  voyages  to 
Norway  in  the  summer,  and  passing  the  winter  together  at  home  in 
Iceland.  On  returning  from  Norway  in  the  year  985,  Bjarni,  who  was 
a  dutiful  son  as  well  as  a  promising  youth,  found  that  his  father  had 
followed  Eric.  He  instantly  proposed,  without  unloading  his  ship,  to 
go  after  him,  though,  as  he  said  to  his  crew,  "  Our  voyage  will  be 
thought  foolish,  as  none  of  us  have  been  on  the  Greenland  sea  be 
fore."  But  this  did  not  daunt  them  ;  they  set  sail,  and  in  three  days 
lost  sight  of  land. 

Then  thick  fogs  beset  them,  and  "for  many  days"  they  were  driven 
by  a  north  wind  they  knew  not  whither.  When  the  weather  cleared, 
they  made  all  sail  for  another  day  and  night,  and  then  welcomed  the 
sight  of  land  again.  It  was,  they  said,  a  country  covered  with  woods, 
without  mountains,  and  with  small  hills  inland.  This  they  were  sure 
could  not  be  Greenland  ;  so  they  turned  seaward  on'ce  more,  and  —  for 
these  Northmen  knew  how  to  sail  on  a  wind  —  "  left  the  land  on  their 
larboard  side,  and  let  the  stern  turn  from  the  land."  After  sailing  two 
days  and  two  nights  they  again  approached  the  coast,  which,  they  saw 
as  they  neared  it,  was  low  and  wooded.  Bjarni  refused  to  go  on  shore, 
at  which  his  crew  grumbled  ;  for  this,  he  said,  can  no  more  be  Green 
land  than  the  land  we  saw  before,  "because  in  Greenland  are  said 
to  be  very  high  ice-hills." 

Then  for  three  nights  and  days  they  went  on  their  way  as  before, 
with  a  southwest  wind,  when  for  the  third  time  they  made  land  ahead, 
and  it  was  "high  and  mountainous,  with  snowy  mountains."  Once 
more  said  Bjarni,  "  In  my  opinion  this  land  is  not  whac  we  want ;  " 
and  again  he  refused  to  leave  his  ship,  but  sailed  along  the  coast  and 
found  it  was  an  island.  Standing  out  to  sea  again,  still  with  the 


BJARNl'S   VOYAGE.  39 

southwest  wind,  after  three  days  and  nights  they  once  more  sighted 
land.  "  This,"  said  Bjarni,  "  is  most  like  what  has  been  told  me  of 
Greenland  ;  and  here  we  shall  take  to  the  land."  He  had  made  what 
sailors  would  call  a  good  landfall,  for  the  cape  before  him  was  called 
Herjulfness,  where  his  father,  Herjulf,  had  built  him  a  house.  Here 
Bjarni  went  on  shore  and  made  it  his  home  for  the  rest  of  his  days.1 

Bjarni  was  blamed  both  in  Norway  and  at  home,  that  he  made  no 
exploration  of  the  country  that  he  had  thus  discovered.  But  Vo  a  e  of 
the  voyage  was  the  subject,  no  doubt,  of  many  a  tale,  and  Bussed  fn8" 
of  much  discussion  in  the  long  winter  evenings  of  Greenland,  Greenland- 
among  a  race  of  bold  and  hardy  sailors,  themselves  hardly  yet  settled 
in  a  region  which,  till  within  a  few  years,  was  only  known  by  the 
name  of  one  who  had  looked  at  it  from  the  deck  of  his  ship.  Bjarni 
seems  to  have  preferred  an  annual  visit  to  Norway,  and  the  pleasures 
of  the  court  of  Earl  Eric,  to  any  more  voyages  in  unknown  seas  ;  but 
in  the  house  of  Eric  the  Red  in  Greenland.,  whose  sons  were  growing 
up,  the  story  was,  no  doubt,  often  told  of  that  dreary  drift  in  the  fog 
for  many  days  before  the  northerly  wind ;  of  the  low  wooded  shores 
and  the  pleasant  green  hills  stretching  inland,  that  greeted  the  long 
ing  eyes  and  brought  hope  again  to  the  desponding  hearts  of  the  lost 
mariners ;  of  the  runs  of  two  and  three  days  each  from  coast  to  coast, 
and  that  wonderful  landfall  at  last,  when  they  dropped  their  anchor 
right  under  the  cape  where  the  father,  whom  the  son  was  in  search  of, 
had  built  his  house.  Thorvald,  the  grandfather  of  these  boys,  was 
among  the  early  Norwegian  pioneers  in  Iceland;  Eric,  his  son,  had  led 
the  first  colony  to  Greenland  ;  so  the  sons  of  Eric  longed  to  throw 
their  seat-posts2  overboard  in  their  turn  on  some  unknown  coast. 

It  was  long  debated,  doubtless,  in  family  councils,  and  finally  deter 
mined  that  this  new  adventure  should  be  undertaken.  In  the  year 
1000,  Leif,  the  eldest  son,  went  to  Herjulfness  and  bought  his  ship  of 
Bjarni,  manned  her  with  a  crew  of  thirty-five  men,  Bjarni  among  them, 
perhaps  as  pilot.  When  he  was  ready  to  sail,  Leif  prayed  his  father 
to  go  with  them  as  the  most  fitting  commander  for  such  an  expedition, 
and  the  old  viking,  objecting  that  he  was  too  old,  consented.  On  the 
way  to  the  ship,  however,  his  horse  stumbled  and  threw  him,  and  look 
ing  upon  the  mishap  as  a  warning,  he  said,  "  It  is  not  ordained  that  I 
should  discover  any  more  countries  than  that  which  we  now  inhabit, 

1  This,  and  the  following  narratives  of  the  voyages  to  Vinland,  we  condense  from  the 
Antiquitates  Americance,  by  Professor  C.  C.  Rafn,  and  published  by  the  Antiquarian  Society 
of  Copenhagen,  1837  ;  collated  with  the  translations  in  Beamish's  Discovery  of  America  by 
the  Northmen,  and  De  Costa's  Pre-Columbian  Discorery. 

'2  The  seat-posts  were  the  columns  of  a  chieftain's  seat,  which,  when  he  went  to  sea,  he 
took  with  him  and  threw  overboard  when  he  approached  a  coast ;  where  they  landed,  di 
rected  by  the  gods,  he  followed,  it  was  assumed,  in  safety. 


40  THE   NORTHMEN  IN   AMERICA.  [CHAP.  III. 

and  we  should  make  no  further  attempt  in  company."  He  returned 
to  his  home  at  Brattahlid,  and  the  expedition  sailed  with  Leif  as  its 
leader. 

Leif  reversed  the  order  of  Bj ami's  voyage,  and  sought  first  for  the 
voyage  of  land  which  the  other  saw  last  —  Newfoundland.  When  they 
Lucky,  son  reached  it  they  went  ashore  and  found  it  a  country  without 
Red.nc  grass  ;  snow  and  ice  covered  it,  and  from  the  sea  to  the 
mountains  it  was  a  plain  of  flat  stones.  Said  Leif,  "  We  have  not 
done  like  Bjarni  about  this  land,  that  we  have  not  been  upon  it ;  now 
will  I  give  the  land  a  name,  and  call  it  Helluland."  1  Again  they 
put  to  sea,  and  sought  the  next  land  that  Bjarni  had  seen — Nova 
Scotia.  Here  also  they  went  on  shore,  and  found  a  country  covered 
with  woods,  with  low  and  flat  beaches  of  white  sand.  "  This  land," 
said  Leif,  "  shall  be  named  after  its  qualities,  and  called  Markland ;  " 
that  is,  woodland.  They  set  sail  again  with  a  northeast  wind,  and  in 
two  days  once  more  made  the  land,  as  Bjarni  had  done,  sailing  in  the 
opposite  direction  with  a  southwest  wind ;  and  the  land  now  before 
them  was  that  which  Bjarni  had  first  seen  when  driven  in  from  the 
sea.  There  can  be  little  doubt  they  were  now  on  the  coast  of  New 
England,  but  precisely  where  is  a  disputed  question,  for  there  are  cer 
tain  incongruities  in  the  original  narratives  which  it  is  difficult,  if  not 
impossible,  to  reconcile. 

Their  first  landing-place  was  an  island  north  of  the  main.     The 

weather  was  pleasant ;  the  dew  was  upon  the  grass,  and  this 

land  coast      they  tasted,  and  it  was  very  sweet.2     When  they  embarked 

explored.  .  ~  i        •    i 

again,  it  was  to  sail  through  a  sound  between  the  island  and 
a  cape  that  ran  out  northward  from  the  main,  past  which  they  went 
westward.  To  find  where  and  what  this  island  was,  is  the  chief 
source  of  difficulty.  Professor  Rafn,  who  says  that  by  northward  the 
Northmen  meant  eastward,  according  to  their  compass,3  believes  that 
it  was  the  island  of  Nantucket,  and  that  they  sailed  thence  across  the 
entrance  to  Buzzard's  Bay,  to  Seaconet  Passage,  and  then  up  the 
Pocasset  River  to  Mount  Hope  Bay.  But  this  is  unsatisfactory  to 
other  interpreters  of  the  Saga,  and  an  island  and  a  cape  on  the  out 
side  of  Cape  Cod,  between  Orleans  and  Chatham,  which  long  ago 
disappeared,  are  substituted  for  Nantucket.4  If  it  be  said  that  Nan- 
tucket  can  be  called  neither  east  or  north  of  any  main  land  in 
sight ;  that  the  waters  between  it  and  the  neighboring  coast  can  hardly 
be  called  a  sound  ;  so  it  may  be  objected  to  the  other  theory  that  it 

1  From  Hell  a,  a  flat  stone. 

2  Honey-dew,  it  is  said,  is  still  found  on  the  grass  at  Nantucket. 
8  Antiquitatfs  Americans,  p.  428. 

*  Pre-Columbian  Discovery  of  America  by  the  Northmen,  B.  F   De  Costa,  p.  29. 


VOYAGE  OF  LEIF  THE  LUCKY. 


41 


is  impossible  to  reconcile  the  incidents  of  the  narrative  to  so  long  a 
distance  between  the  first 
landing-place  and  the  place 
of  final  settlement;  and 
that  if  an  island  must  be 
brought  up  from  the  bot 
tom  of  the  sea  to  meet  the 
exigency,  it  would  be  quite 
as  easy  to  place  it  where  it 
would  answer  to  all  the  dif 
ficulties  of  the  case.  Yet 
there  is  no  doubt  that 
marked  changes  have  tak 
en  place  within  the  last  few 
centuries  along  the  outer 
coast  of  Cape  Cod  ;  that  an 
island  called  Nawset,  and  a 
cape  called  Point  Gilbert, 
once  existed  at  the  points 
indicated,  and  were  knotvn 
to  Capt.  John  Smith  and 
Bartholomew  Gosnold  early 
in  the  seventeenth  century.1 
Making  due  allowance,  then, 
for  possible  inaccuracies  in  a  narrative  written  long  after  the  event, 
it  is  by  no  means  improbable  that  some  discrepancies  may  be  ac 
counted  for  by  changes  along  the  coast  line  of  Massachusetts  within 
the  last  eight  hundred  years. 

It  is  now,  however,  generally  conceded  that  this  was  a  veritable 
discovery  of  the  coast  of  Rhode  Island  by  the  Northmen,  and 
that  they  landed  at  some  point  either  in  Mount  Hope  Bay  or  and  in  loth 
in  Narragansett  Bay.  They  went  up  a  river  that  came 
through  a  lake,  says  the  narrative,  and  this  is  in  accordance  with  the 
appearance  of  those  waters.  Here  they  cast  anchor,  went  ashore,  and 
built  a  house  in  which  to  pass  the  winter.  According  to  the  latest 
explanation  of  the  Scandinavian  calendar,  their  description  of  the 
shortest  day  gave  the  sun  as  rising  at  7.30  A.  M.,  and  setting  at  4.30 
p.  M.,  thus  fixing  the  latitude  at  41°  24'  10",  which  is  about  that  of 
Mount  Hope  Bay.  "  There  came,"  they  said,  "  no  frost  in  winter, 
and  little  did  the  grass  wither  there  ;  "  and  "  the  nature  of  the  coun- 

1  See  an  article  by  Amos  Otis,  of  Yarmouth,  Mass.,  on  The  Discovery  of  an  Ancient  Ship 
on  Nawset  Beach,  Orleans,  Cape  Cod,  in  May,  1863.  New  England  Genealogical  Register 
•vol.  18,  p.  37,  et  seq. 


Map  of  Cape  Cod  and  Nawset  Isle. 


42  THE  NORTHMEN  IN   AMERICA.  [CHAP.  III. 

try  was,  as  they  thought,  so  good,  that  cattle  would  not  require  house- 
feeding."  Such  a  season  would  be  exceptional  now,  even  for  the 
neighborhood  of  Newport ;  but  any  ordinary  New  England  winter 
would  seem  mild  to  these  hardy  Greenlanders. 

Leif  divided  his  company  into  two  parties,  one  of  which  was  alter 
nately  to  explore  the  country.  On  one  of  these  expeditions  a  man 
named  Tyrker,  a  German,  and  who  was  Leif's  foster-father,  was  miss 
ing.  A  party  had  just  started  to  search  for  him,  with  Leif  at  its 
head,  when  the  German  reappeared  in  a  state  of  great  excitement. 
He  gesticulated  wildly,  spoke  for  a  long  time  in  his  native  tongue, 
and  "  Leif  saw  that  his  foster-father  was  not  in  his  right  senses."  But 
Leif  was  mistaken ;  the  poor  German,  who  had  lived  long  in  the  ice 
fields  of  the  frozen  North,  had  only  been  carried  back  for  the  moment 
to  the  Vaterland,  for  he  said  at  length  in  Norsk,"  'I  have  not  been 
much  farther  off,  but  still  I  have  something  new  to  tell  of  ;  I  found 
vines  and  grapes  ! '  '  But  is  that  true,  my  fosterer  ?  '  quoth  Leif. 
'  Surely  it  is  true,'  replied  he,  '  for  I  was  bred  up  in  a  land  where 
there  is  no  want  of  either  vines  or  grapes.' ' 

Then,  no  doubt,  he  led  them  to  the  woods,  that  they  might  see 
with  their  own  eyes  the  climbing  vines  and,  the  clustering  fruit,  and 
it  may  well  have  seemed  to  them  that  in  a  country  where  these  grew 
wild  there  could  be  no  real  winter.  So  precious  were  they  to  Leif 
that  thenceforward  one  duty  of  his  men  was  to  gather  grapes,  and  he 
filled  his  long-boat  with  them  to  take  back  to  Greenland.  What  bet 
ter  evidence  could  he  bring  of  the  value  of  the  land  to  a  people  whose 
greatest  delight,  next  to  fighting,  was  drinking  ?  They  had  not  yet 
forgotten,  notwithstanding  their  new  religion,  that  the  chief  of  their 
old  Pagan  gods,  Odin,  had  no  need  of  food  only  because  wine  was 
to  him  both  meat  and  drink ;  that  all  the  heroes  of  Valhalla  drank 
daily  of  the  wonderful  flow  of  milk  from  the  she-goat  Heidrun,  and 
that  the  milk  was  mead.  So  heaping  up  on  deck  the  grapes  of  this 
viniand  the  beautiful  land  where  in  winter  was  no  frost,  and  which  he 
Qood-  named  Viniand  (Vineland),  and  filling  the  hold  of  his  vessel 

with  timber,  about  which,  at  least,  there  could  be  no  questionable  value 
in  treeless  Greenland,  Leif  returned  home  in  the  spring.  It  was  on 
this  return  voyage,  or  one  of  the  year  before  from  Norway,  that  he 
saved  a  shipwrecked  crew  ;  but  whenever  it  was,  for  that  and  the  dis 
covery  of  Viniand  he  was  thereafter  known  as  Leif  the  Lucky. 

The  voyage,  as  we  can  readily  believe,  made  "much  talk"  in  Green 
land,  and  another  of  the  sons  of  Eric  thought  the  country 
goes  to  New  had  not  been  sufficiently  explored.  "Thou  canst  go  with 
my  ship,  brother,  if  thou  wilt,  to  Viniand,"  said  Leif  ;  for 
Eric  the  Red  having  died  that  winter,  he  was  now  (1002)  the  head 


THORVALD  IN  NEW  ENGLAND. 


43 


of  the  house,  and  not  disposed  just  then  for  maritime  adventures. 
Thorvald  accepted  the  offer,  and  with  a  crew  of  thirty  men  sailed  for 
the  new  country. 

The  booths  which  his  brother  had  put  up  were  still  standing,  and 
he  went  into  winter  quarters,  his  men  fishing  for  their  support ;  the 
waters,  as  Leif  had  found  two  years  before,  abounding  with  salmon 
and  other  fish.  In  the  spring,  Thorvald  sent  some  of  his  men  in  the 
ship's  long-boat  to  explore  to  the  westward.  They  spent  the  summer 
in  this  pleasant  excursion,  coasting  along  the  shores  of  Rhode  Island, 
Connecticut,  and  Long  Island,  the  whole  length  of  the  Sound,  pene 
trating,  probably,  to  New  York,  and  finding  there  another  lake  through 
which  a  river  flowed  to  the  sea.  They  landed  on  many  islands  ;  they 


Norse   Ships  entering   Boston   Harbor. 

beached  their  boat  many  times  on  the  broad,  wide,  shallow  sands,  down 
to  the  edge  of  which  grew  the  green  grass  and  the  great  trees  which 
made  this  pleasant  land  seem  a  very  garden  to  these  wanderers  from 
a  country  all  rocks,  and  ice-mountains,  and  fields  of  snow.  But  once 
only  did  they  see  any  sign  of  human  habitation,  and  that  was  a  corn- 
shed  built  of  wood, 

The  next  spring  (1004),  Thorvald  started  for  a  more  extended  trip, 
as  he  went  in  his  ship.  Standing  first  eastward,  he  then  sailed  north 
ward  along  the  sea-coast  of  Cape  Cod,  where  a  heavy  storm  caught 
him  off  a  ness  (cape),  and  drove  his  ship  ashore,  perhaps  at  Race 
Point.  Here  they  remained  a  long  time  to  repair  damages,  putting 
in  a  new  keel ;  the  old  one  they  set  up  in  the  sand,  and  the  place  they 
called  Kjalarness  (Keel-ness  or  Keelcape),  in  commemoration  of  the 
disaster.  Then  they  cruised  along  the  opposite  shore  of  what  is  now 


44  THE   NORTHMEN   IN   AMERICA.  [CHAP.  III. 

Plymouth  County,  Massachusetts,  and  sailed  into  its  bays  till  they 
came  to  "  a  point  of  land  which  stretched  out  and  was  covered  with 
wood."  l  "  Here,"  said  Thorvald,  "  is  beautiful,  and  here  I  would  like 
to  raise  my  dwelling."  Before  the  day  was  out  he  looked  upon  his 
words  as  prophetic. 

For  the  first  time  the  Northmen  here  met  with  the  natives  —  met 

them  as  Europeans  so  often  did  in  subsequent  centuries, 
the  skrsei-  Looking  about  them  at  this  beautiful  spot,  they  saw  in  a 

secluded  nook  three  skin-boats  set  up  as  tents,  beneath  which 
were  nine  Skrasllings,2  on  whom  they  stole  unawares  and  captured 
eight  of  them.  The  ninth  escaped;  the  eight  they  immediately  killed 
in  cold  blood.  This  cruel  deed  done,  they  lay  down  to  sleep  upon 
the  grass  under  the  trees ;  but  it  was  not  to  pleasant  dreams.  "  There 
came  a  shout  over  them  so  that  they  all  awoke.  Thus  said  the  shout : 
'  Wake  thou  !  Thorvald  !  and  all  thy  companions,  if  thou  wilt  preserve 
life,  and  return  thou  to  thy  ship,  with  all  thy  men,  and  leave  the  land 
without  delay.' ''  It  was  the  savage  war-whoop  of  the  enraged  Ski-sel 
lings,  come  to  avenge  the  murder  of  their  fellows.  The  Northmen 
fled  to  their  ship  to  defend  themselves  behind  their  battle- skreen.3 
"  Fight  little  against  them,"  was  Thorvald's  order,  mindful  now  of 
the  mercy  he  should  have  shown  before.  When  the  fight  was  over, 
and  the  Skra3llings  had  retired,  the  answer  to  Thorvald's  inquiry  as 

1  It  is  conjectured  that  this  point  is  Nantasket  Beach,  at  the  end  of  which  is  Point  Alder- 
ton,  a  noble  promontory  opposite  the  narrow  entrance  to  Boston  Harbor.     But  this  can 
hardly  be,  for  Nantasket  Beach  is  not  "  a  point,"  but  a  peninsula  between  three  and  four 
miles  long,  not  "  stretching  out  "  into  the  sea,  but  making  a  continuation  of  the  coast  line 
from  Cohasset  Rocks  to  the  channel  connecting  Boston  Harbor  with  the  sea,  and  inclosing 
on  one  side  the  inner  bay  into  which  various  rivers  empty  south  of  Boston.    This  peninsula 
is,  most  of  it,  a  long,  narrow  beach  of  white  sea  sand,  and  can  never  have  been  covered 
with  wood.     Point  Alderton,  moreover,  is  a  hill  several  hundred  feet  in  height,  and  is  one 
of  a  group  of  similar  hills  within  a  mile  or  two.     The  description  in  the  Saga  does  not  in 
the  least  conform  to  the  natural  features  of  this  locality,  and  the  "  remarkable  grove  of 
trees"  referred  to  in  Antiquitates  Americana;  as  mentioned  in  Laurie  and  Whittie's  Sailing 
Directions,  and  the  Duke  of  Saxe  Weimar's  Travels,  is  a  singular  grove  of  small  wild  crab 
trees  covering  an  acre  or  two  of  ground,  but  not  visible  from  Point  Alderton  or  Nantasket 
Beach.     There  is  at  Cohasset,  about  ten  miles  south  of  Point  Alderton,  a  point  of  land,  a 
bold,  rocky  promontory,  jutting  out  from  beautiful  wooded  hills,  which  might  well  have  im 
pressed  Thorvald  with  its  beauty,  and  have  been  a  favorite  place  of  resort,  in  its  sheltered 
nooks  and  for  its  neighborhood  to  good  fishing-grounds,  to  the  Skrallings. 

2  The  Northmen  were  used  to  calling  the  Esquimaux  Skrsellings,  a  term  of  contempt, 
meaning,  says  Crantz,  "chips,  parings,  i.  e.,  dwarfs."     The  assumption  is  that  these  people 
of  the  Vinland  vicinity  were  Esquimaux.    If  that  be  true,  and  the  term  was  not  used  merely 
for  want  of  any  other  to  apply  to  copper-colored  natives,  then  we  are  to  conclude  that  the 
Indians  were  later  comers  in  that  part  of  the  country.     Did  they  first  displace  the  Mound- 
building  people,  and  then,  in  the  course  of  time,  move  upon  and  displace  the  Esquimmix 
of  the  Atlantic  coast  ?     Was  it  this  race  who  were  not  smokers,  and  who  made  the  shell- 
heaps  where  no  pipes  are  found  ? 

3  A  shield  made  of  large  planks  of  wood. 


THORSTEIN   OF   ERICSFIORD. 


45 


gotten 


Burial-place  of  Thorvald. 


to  who  was  wounded  was,   None.     Then    said   he,  "  I   have 
a  wound  under  the  arm,  for  an  arrow  fled  between  the  edge 
of  the  ship  and  the  shield,  in  under  my  arm,  and  here  is  the   killed- 
arrow,  and  it  will  prove  a  mortal  wound  to  me.     Now  counsel  I  ye, 
that    ye    get    ready    in 
stantly  to  depart,  but  ye 
shall  bear  me  to  that  cape 
where  I  thought  it  best  to 
dwell ;  it  may  be  that  a 
true   word  fell  from   my 
mouth,  that  I  should  dwell 
there  for  a   time  ;    there 
shall    ye    bury    me,   and 
set  up  crosses  at  my  head 
and    feet,    and    call    the 
place  Krossaness  forever, 
in  all  time  to  come."    And 
it  was  as  he  said  ;  he  died,  and  they  buried  him  on  the  pleasant  cape 
that  looked  out  upon  the  shores  and  waters  of  Massachusetts  Bay ; 
at  his  head  and  feet  they  planted  crosses,  and  then  sailed  back  to  Vin- 
land  to  their  companions  with  the  heavy  tidings  of  the  death  of  their 
young  commander.     In  the  spring  the  colony,  with  another  load  of 
grapes  and  timber,  returned  to  Greenland. 

There  was  still  another  son  of  Eric,  Thorstein  of  Ericsfiord.  He 
had  married  Gudrid,  the  widow  of  Thorer,  captain  of  that  Eric,8  gon 
crew  of  shipwrecked  mariners  whom  Leif  had  rescued.  Thor-  Thorstein- 
stein,  taking  his  wife  with  him,  sailed  in  the  spring  or-  summer  of 
1005  for  Vinland,  chiefly,  however,  to  find  Krossaness  and  bring  home 
the  body  of  his  unfortunate  brother  Thorvald.  But  Vinland  he  did 
not  find,  nor  Krossaness ;  and  after  cruising  about  for  months  without 
once  seeing  land,  they  returned  early  in  the  winter  and  landed  in  the 
western  settlement,  at  some  distance  from  Ericsfiord.  It  was  not  long 
before  sickness  broke  out  here  among  the  crew ;  many  died,  and  among 
them  Thorstein.  Wonderful  marvels  attended  this  season  of  death  ; 
the  dead  sat  up  in  their  beds  and  talked ;  they  shook  the  house,  as 
they  lay  down  again,  till  all  its  timbers  creaked  ;  and  they  made  them 
selves  preternaturally  heavy  when  taken  out  for  burial.  Thorstein 
was  one  of  these  ghostly  performers.  He  prophesied  to  the  weeping 
Gudrid,  telling  her,  first,  for  her  comfort,  that  he  had  "  come  to  a  good 
resting-place."  She  would  be  married  again,  he  said,  and  from  her 
and  her  husband  would  descend  "  a  numerous  posterity,  powerful, 
distinguished,  and  excellent,  sweet,  and  well  -  favoured."  Many 


46 


THE   NORTHMEN  IN  AMERICA. 


[CHAP.  III. 


Thorfinn 

Karisrfnc's 

ExpeJition. 


Norse    Ruins   in    Greenland. 


other  pleasant  things  he  told  her,  all  of  which  came  to  pass  in  due 
season.1 

The  next  and  most  important  expedition  of  all  those  to  Vinland, 
next  to  Leif's  first  voyage,  was  made  bv  Thorfinn,  surnamed 

,  .  ,  .    .  .   J  . 

Karlseine,  that  is,  the  promising,  or  the  man  destined  to  be- 

TT  .  T 

come  great.  He  was  a  merchant  or  Iceland,  wealthy,  and 
of  distinguished  lineage.  A  trading  voyage  had  brought  him  to  Green 
land  in  1006,  and  he  remained  for  the  winter  at  Brattahlid,  the  family 

seat  and  old  home  of  Eric, 
which  Leif  had  inherited. 
It  was  a  winter  of  festivi 
ties.  "  They  set  up  the 
game  of  chess  "  to  beguile 
the  long  winter  evenings, 
and  "  sought  amusement 
in  the  reciting  of  history, 
and  in  many  other  things, 
and  were  able  to  pass  life 
joyfully."  The  Yule  feast 
was  of  more  than  usual 
profusion  and  richness,  and 
that  was  speedily  followed  by  a  marriage,  which  was  celebrated  with 
great  rejoicings.  Gudrid,  who  had  returned  home  in  the  spring  with 
the  body  of  her  late  husband,  Thorstein,  had  found  favor  in  the  eyes 
of  Karlsefne,  for  she  was  "  a  grave  and  dignified  woman,  and  there 
with  sensible,  and  knew  well  how  to  carry  herself  among  strangers." 
Thus,  before  the  first  year  of  her  widowhood  was  over,  was  brought 
to  pass  the  first  item  in  her  late  husband's  prophecy,  by  her  marriage 
to  an  Icelander. 

Vinland  the  Good  was  not  forgotten  ;  the  conversation  often  turned 
upon  it,  and  "  it  was  said  that  a  voyage  thither  would  be  particularly 
profitable  by  reason  of  the  fertility  of  the  land."  With  Karlsefne 
from  Iceland  had  come  three  other  merchants,  Snorri  Thorbrandson, 
in  the  ship  with  Karlsefne,  and  Bjarni  (or  Biarne)  Grimolfson  and 
Thorhall  Gamlason,  in  a  ship  of  their  own.  The  talk  of  the  new  land 
had  its  due  effect  on  these  strangers,  and  an  expedition  was  planned  to 
consist  of  these  two  Iceland  vessels,  and  a  third  commanded  by  a 
Greenlander,  Thorvard.  This  man  had  married  Freydis,  a  natural 

1  Sir  Walter  Scott,  in  his  Abstract  of  the  Eyrbyggia  Saga,  alluding  to  stories  of  this  sort 
among  the  Icelanders,  many  of  which  are  curiously  like  the  alleged  phenomena  of  modern 
"  Spiritualism,"  says,  "  Such  incidents  make  an  invariable  part  of  the  history  of  a  rude 
age,  and  the  chronicles  which  do  not  afford  these  marks  of  human  credulity  may  be  griev 
ously  suspected  as  being  deficient  in  authenticity."  Beamish  (Discovery  of  the  Northmen) 
cites  this  remark  as  peculiarly  applicable  to  the  narratives  relating  to  Vinland. 


COLONY   OF   THORFINN   KARLSEFNE.  47 

daughter  of  Eric  the  Red,  who  had  a  conspicuous  part  to  play  in  the 
subsequent  attempts  at  colonization.  Thus  in  one  winter,  at  a  Green 
land  fireside,  was  organized  a  voluntary  expedition,  to  consist  of  three 
ships  and  one  hundred  and  forty  men  and  women,1  about  equalling  in 
size  that  for  which,  four  centuries  later,  Columbus  waited  seven  years, 
with  prayers  and  in  poverty,  upon  the  Spanish  sovereigns. 

The  adventurers  sailed  in  the  spring  of  1007.  Gudrid  and  Freydis 
embarked  with  their  husbands  ;  and  there  were  on  board  many  other 
women,  married  and  unmarried  ;  which  was  not,  as  it  turned  out, 
fortunate,  for  among  their  subsequent  troubles,  and  when  they  divided 
into  parties,  "  the  women,"  says  one  of  the  narratives,  "  were  the 
cause  of  it,  for  those  who  were  unmarried  would  injure  those  who  were 
married,  and  hence  arose  great  disturbance."  But  the  object  evi 
dently  was  to  make  a  permanent  settlement,  and  that,  of  course,  was 
out  of  the  question  without  women.  They  took  with  them  also  cattle 
of  all  kinds. 

The  enterprise  was  plainly  full  of  promise  at  its  beginning ;  but  it 
met  with  various  misfortunes,  and,  at  the  end  of  three  years,  was 
abandoned.  It  does  not  seem  certain  at  what  precise  spot  the  colony 
was  planted.  The  first  landfall  of  the  fleet  after  leaving  Markland  — 
for  they  touched  there  as  well  as  at  Helluland  —  was  Kjalarness, 
which  they  recognized  by  the  keel  set  up  there  by  the  unfortunate 
Thorvald  three  years  before.  They  ran  past  Cape  Cod,  and  because 
"  it  was  long  to  sail  by,"  they  called  it  Furdustrands,  or  Wonder- 
strands.  Somewhere  along  this  coast  they  put  in  at  a  cove,  and  Karl- 
sefne  sent  out  as  scouts  two  Scotch  slaves,  who  were  very  swift  of  foot, 
and  who  had  been  given,  years  before,  to  Leif  the  Lucky  by  the  King 
of  Norway,  as  one  of  the  inducements  to  persuade  him  to  become  a 
Christian.  The  historians  are  careful  to  describe  the  apparel  of  these 
Scots,  —  a  man  and  a  woman,  —  which  must  have  been  good  for 
running,  as  it  consisted  of  only  one  garment,  and  was  a  happy  combi 
nation  of  a  hat  and  a  breech-cloth,  covering  the  head,  buttoning  be 
tween  the  legs,  but  open  everywhere  else,  and  without  sleeves.  These 
scouts  were  gone  three  days,  and  came  back  with  encouraging  reports 
of  the  pleasantness  and  fruitfulness  of  the  country,  one  carrying  a 
bunch  of  grapes,  the  other  an  ear  of  corn.  Nan  tucket,  or  Martha's 
Vineyard,  which  the  fleet  next  reached,  and  where  eider-ducks 2  were 

1  The  Northmen  counted  by  the  long  and  the  short  hundred.     If  the  number  of  Karl- 
sefne's  expedition  were  reckoned  by  the  long  hundred,  they  counted  one  hundred  and  sixty 
persons. 

2  Though  the  eider-duck  is  no  longer  known  on  those  shores,  the  Northmen  are  not  likely 
to  have  made  any  mistake  as  to  the  birds  they  saw  in  such  numbers.     That  particular  duck 
was  as  familiar  to  them,  no  doubt,  as  to  the  modern  Greenlanders  and  Icelanders,  to  whom 
the  down  has  long  been  held  as  so  precious  an  article  of  traffic  that  the  bird  is  under  uni' 


48 


THE   NORTHMEN  IN  AMERICA. 


[CHAP.  III. 


so  plentiful  that  it  was  difficult  to  walk  without  treading  on  their  eggs, 
they  called  Stream  Island,  and  the  bay  beyond  —  Buzzard's  Bay  — 
Stream  Frith,  because  of  the  rapid  currents  around  their  shores.  On 
the  shores  of  this  bay  they  spent  the  first  winter. 

And  with  this  winter  their  troubles  began.    They  had  improvidently 
neglected  to  lav  in  a  sufficient  stock  of  provisions,  and  when, 

Malcontents  ° 

•n  the  coi-  the  next  summer,  the  fishing  was  poor  there  came  absolute 
scarcity.  Now  in  Thorvard's  ship  was  one  Thorhall,  who 
had  been  the  huntsman  in  summer,  and  in  winter  the  steward  of  Eric 
the  Red.  He  was,  it  is  said,  "  a  large  man,  and  strong,  black,  and 
like  a  giant,  silent,  and  foul-mouthed  in  his  speech,  and  always  egged 


Scots   Returning  to  the  Ship. 

on  (^eggjadi)  Eric  to  the  worst ;  he  was  a  bad  Christian."  Perhaps 
it  was  only  hunger  that  first  drove  him  to  desert ;  but  he  pretended, 
after  three  days'  absence  in  the  wilderness,  and  the  others  believed 
him,  that  while  they  were  praying  to  God  for  food  without  an  answer, 
his  invocations  to  Thor  had  caused  a  whale  to  be  cast  upon  the  beach 
during  this  season  of  scarcity,  of  which  they  all  eat,  and  were  all  made 
sick.  But  he  was  insubordinate  as  well  as  morose  and  impious,  for 
when  soon  after  it  was  proposed  to  seek  a  new  and  better  habitation, 
and  Karlsefne  thought  it  best  that  they  should  go  southward,  Thor 
hall  refused,  and  would  go  northward.  It  was  made  plain  presently 

versal  protection.  See  Letters  on  Iceland,  during  the  Banks'  Expedition  in  1772.  London, 
1780,  p.  144,  et  seg.  Crantz's  Greenland,  book  ii.  chap.  1.  Description  of  Greenland,  by 
Hans  Egede,  chap.  v. 


COLONY   OF   THORFLNN  KARLSEFNE.  49 

that  he  meant  to  abandon  the  expedition  and  return  to  Greenland, 
and  he  persuaded  nine  others  of  the  company  to  follow  him.  As  the 
manner  was  with  these  old  vikings,  in  times  of  unusual  excitement, 
he  took  to  verse,  and  jeered  at  and  satirized  Vinland  the  Good.  As 
he  carried  water  to  his  ship,  of  which  they  seem  to  have  allowed  him 
to  take  possession,  he  sang,  — 

"  People  told  me  when  I  came 
Hither,  all  would  be  so  fine  ; 
The  good  Vinlaud,  known  to  fame, 
Rich  in  fruits  and  choicest  wine ; 
Now  the  water-pail  they  send  ; 
To  the  fountain  I  must  bend  ; 
Nor  from  out  this  land  divine 
Have  I  quaffed  one  drop  of  wine." 

And  once  more,  as  he  hoisted  his  sails  to  desert  his  comrades  in  dis 
tress,  he  sang  another  song,  mocking  at  their  disaster  and  reminding 
them  how,  by  the  help  of  the  "  red-bearded  "  Thor,  he  had  poisoned 
them  with  boiled  whale,  thus :  — 

"  Let  our  trusty  band 
Haste  to  Fatherland  ; 
Let  our  vessel  brave 
Plough  the  angry  wave, 
While  those  few  who  love 
Vinland  here  may  rove, 
Or,  with  idle  toil, 
Fetid  whales  may  boil, 
Here  on  Furdustrand 
Far  from  Fatherland."  1 

But  disaster  attended  these  deserters.  After  doubling  Cape  Cod  a 
gale  from  the  west  struck  their  vessel,  and  merchants  from  Ireland 
afterward  reported  that  she  was  driven  before  the  wind  to  the  coast 
of  that  country,  where  Thorhall  and  his  companions  were  seized  by  the 
natives  and  reduced  to  slavery. 

After  the  departure  of  the  malcontents,  the  two  other  ships,  com 
manded  by  Karlsefne  and  Biarni  (Biarne^)  Grimolfson,  set 

*  v  .  Karlsefne 

sail  from  the  settlement  at  Buzzard's  Bay  upon  an  exploring  explores 

,.      .  Ill  »  T  f       COaSt°f 

expedition  southward  along  the  coast.     According  to  two  or  Rhode  isi- 
the  three  narratives,  and  these  the  best  and  most  circum 
stantial,  they  sailed  "  a  long  time  "  before  they  came  "  to  a  river  that 
ran  out  from  the  land  through  a  lake  to  the  sea."     The  other  account 
is,  that  they  went  directly  on  their  arrival  to  Leif's  booths,  and  Leif, 
it  will  be.  remembered,  we.nt  also  up  a  river  that  flowed  through  a 
lake.     The  supposition  is  that  Karlsefne  and  his  companions  anchored 

1  Beaniish'a  Translations. 


50  THE   NORTHMEN   IN   AMERICA.  [CHAP.  III. 

in  Mount  Hope  Bay,  where,  it  is  supposed,  Leif  had  passed  the  winter, 
partly  because  of  this  river  and  lake,  the  sandy  shoals  and  the  ebb  of 
the  tide,  which  answer  to  the  character  of  that  bay ;  and  partly  be 
cause  they  called  the  place  where  they  landed  Hop,  and  a  hill  near 
Bristol,  Rhode  Island,  the  seat  of  the  Indian  chief,  King  Philip,  was 
known  to  the  first  English  settlers  as  Mount  Hope.1  The  Indians, 
it  is  assumed,  had  preserved  the  name,  and  thus  the  settlement  of  the 
Northmen  is  fixed,  —  a  fanciful  and  rather  violent  supposition,  which 
will  hardly  bear  close  examination.  As  they  "  sailed  long  to  the 
south,"  and  as  their  course  from  Buzzard's  Bay  to  Mount  Hope  Bay 
would  be  first  southwest,  and  then  northward,  it  seems  quite  as  likely 
that  they  finally  reached  some  other  point  on  the  coast ;  where,  is  and 
always  must  be  a  matter  of  conjecture. 

But  wherever  it  was,  they  set  themselves  down  on  the  upper  side 
First  winter  °^  *ne  ^ke  or  k<iy,  some  putting  up  houses  directly  on  the 
inviniand.  s[iOre  an(]  others  going  farther  inland.  For  one  winter,  at 
least,  it  proved  a  pleasant  abiding  place.  The  streams  were  full  of 
fish;  on  the  meadows  they  found  fields  of  "self-sown  wheat,"  —  that 
is,  of  maize  or  Indian  corn,  sown  probably  by  the  natives  ;  on  the 
uplands,  the  trees  were  festooned  with  grape-vines,  so  precious  in  their 
eyes;  and  the  woods  were  full  of  game.  All  the  winter  long  there 
was  no  snow  upon  the  ground,  and  the  cattle  sustained  themselves 
upon  the  still  green  and  juicy  grasses  of  the  fields.2  There  seemed  to 

1  "  How,  when,  or  by  whom  this  noted  point  received  the  name  of  Mount  Hope,  does  not 
appear.      Dr.  Stiles  notes,  in   his   edition  of  Church's  History,  that  '  its  name  is  Mont- 
haup,  a  mountain  in  Bristol.'     The  editor  of  Yamoden  says,  '  The  Indians  called  it  Mont- 
aup  or  Mont-hau]> ; '  and  Alden,  Epitaphs,  iv.  77,  that,  'according  to  authentic  tradition, 
however,  Mon  Top  was  the  genuine  Aboriginal  name  of  this  celebrated  eminence.'     But 
these  are  most  likely  all  corruptions  of  Mount  Hope."     Drake's  edition  of  Hubbard's  In 
dian  Wars,  Eoxbury,  1865,  vol.  i.  p.  46;  note  by  the  editor. 

2  As  the  mildness  of  the  winter  and  absence  of  snow  are  dwelt  upon  in  the  narratives  of 
the  different  vo'yages,  it  is  probable  that  the  climate  of  North  America  was,  nine  centuries 
ago,  more  moderate  than  now,  as  it  is  positively  known  that  of  Greenland  and  Iceland 
was.     And  this  would  be  entirely  in  accordance  with  the  astronomical  theory  of  that  grad 
ual  change  whereby,  through  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes,  the  order  of  the  seasons 
is  completely  reversed  in  every  period  of  10,500  years.    If  we  are  now  in  that  cycle  which 
is  slowly  bringing  longer  winters  and  more  intense  cold  to  the  northern  hemisphere,  —  as 
some  astronomers  suppose,  —  one  tenth  of  that  period  would  make  quite  change  enough  to 
account  for  these  statements  of  the  Northmen.     Even  six  hundred  years  later,  Edward 
Winslow,  who  was  exceedingly  careful  and  conscientious  in  all  his  statements,  wrote  in 
1624  (Narrative  of  the  Plantations  :  Purchas,  vol.  iv. ),  "Then  for  the  temperature  of  the  air. 
in  almost  three  years'  experience  I  can  scarce  distinguish  New  England  from  Old  England 
in  respect  of  heat  and  cold,  frost,  snow,  rain,  wind,  etc.  ;  ....  if  it  (the  heat)  do  exceed 
England,  it  is  so  little  as  must  require  better  judgments  to  discern  it.     And  for  the  winter, 
I  rather  think  (if  there  be  difference)  it  is  both  sharper  and  longer  in  New  England  than 
Old  ;  and  yet  the  want  of  those  comforts  in  the  one,  which  I  have  enjoyed  in  the  other, 

may  deceive  my  judgment  also I  cannot  conceive  of  any  (climate)  to  agree  better 

with  the  constitutions  of  the  English,  not  being  oppressed  with  the  extremity  of  heat,  nor 


COLONY   OF   THORFINN  KARLSEFNE.  51 

be  none  in  this  pleasant  land  to  molest  them  or  make  them  afraid,  for 
when,  soon  after  their  arrival,  a  great  number  of  the  natives  came 
upon  them  suddenly,  they  came  with  signs  of  peace.  They  landed 
from  their  canoes,  and  loitered  about  the  settlement,  gazing  in  wonder 
upon  the  strangers  and  all  that  belonged  to  them,  but  they  had  appar 
ently  no  hostile  intent,  and  neither  meddled  nor  were  they  meddled 
with.  When  they  left,  they  disappeared  beyond  the  cape,  and  nothing 
more  was  seen  of  them  till  the  following  spring.  They  are  described 
as  "  black  and  ill-favored  (or  fierce),  and  with  coarse  hair  on  the 
head ;  they  had  large  eyes  and  broad  cheeks." 

But  in  the  spring  (1009)  they  came  back  again  in  much  augmented 
numbers,  "  so  many,"  it  is  related,  "  as  if  the  sea  was  sowen  Trade  with 
with  coal."  But  still  they  came  in  amity,  and  a  brisk  trade  the  natives 
at  once  sprung  up  between  them  and  the  colonists.  Red  cloth  was 
exchanged,  as  long  as  it  lasted,  for  skins,  sables,  and  other  furs  ;  when 
that  was  all  gone  the  women  made  milk  porridge,  which  satisfied  the 
savages  quite  as  well  and  brought  quite  as  much  as  the  bits  of  red 
cloth,  though,  as  the  Saga  says,  they  only  carried  away  in  their  bellies 
the  results  of  a  barter  of  which  the  Northmen  gained  the  more  sub 
stantial  benefit.  But  this  pleasing  state  of  things  was  interrupted  by 
an  unfortunate  incident.  A  bull  belonging  to  Karlsefne  rushed  out 
of  the  woods  with  a  hideous  bellow,  and  so  frightened  the  Skrasllings 
that  they  fled  to  their  boats  and  paddled  away  with  all  the  strength 
that  a  new  terror  could  give  them.  It  was  a  ludicrous  interruption 
to  the  profitable  traffic  of  por 
ridge  for  peltries ;  but  the  na 
tives  evidently  looked  upon  it 
as  a  hostile  demonstration, 
having  the  same  dread  of  this 
huge,  unknown  beast,  that 
the  Indians  of  Hispaniola  had 
some  centuries  later  of  the  Esquimaux  skin-boat. 

horses   of    the  Spaniards. 

For  weeks,  perhaps  for  months,  for  the  accounts  differ,  nothing  more 
was  seen  of  the  Skrallings ;  but  when  they  returned  again,  they  came 
"  like  a  rushing  torrent,"  with  the  poles  of  their  boats  now  turned 
away  from  the  sun,  whereas  in  their  previous  visit  they  had  been 
turned  toward  it.  The  Northmen  looked  upon  this  as  a  sign  of  hos 
tility,  and  accepted  the  challenge,  holding  up  to  them  the  red  shield  of 
war  instead  of  the  white  shield  of  peace. 

nipped  by  biting  cold."  No  truthful  and  accurate  observer  could  write  thus  now  of  the 
bitter  climate  of  Massachusetts,  with  its  extremes  of  temperature  in  summer  and  winter. 


52  THE   NORTHMEN   IN   AMERICA.  [CHAP.  III. 

Then  began  a  furious  battle.  The  Northmen  had  the  advantage  of 
Battle  with  weapons,  for  they  fought  with  swords.  But  they  were  over- 
Skrreiiings.  pOwerec{  by  numbers,  and  soon  fled.  Something  like  a  panic, 
moreover,  seized  upon  them,  even  more  senseless  than  the  fright  which 
overcame  the  Skrgellings  the  spring  before  at  the  bellowings  of  the 
bull.  It  is  said  that  a  huge  ball  at  the  end  of  a  pole  was  flourished 
over  them,  and  thrown  to  the  ground  with  a  horrid  noise.  The  noise 
and  the  novelty  of  this  method  of  warfare,  with  the  accompaniment  of 
shouts  and  yells,  seem  to  have  been  the  only  frightful  thing  about  it, 
for  it  did  the  Northmen  no  harm,  though  they  fled  before  it  like 
affrighted  children.  But  there  was  one  among  them  who  was  not 
frightened  ;  this  was  Freydis,  the  natural  daughter  of  Eric  the  Red, 
and  wife  of  Thorvard.  Rushing  out  among  the  combatants,  she 
shrieked,  "Why  do  ye  run,  stout  men  as  ye  are,  before  these  mis 
erable  wretches,  whom  I  thought  ye  would  knock  down  like  cattle  ? 
And  if  I  had  weapons,  methinks  I  could  fight  better  than  any  of 
ye."  But  they  gave  no  heed  to  the  dauntless  woman,  still  seeking 
safety  in  flight  to  the  shelter  of  the  woods.  Freydis,  who  was  heavy 
with  child,  followed  closely  behind,  pursued  by  the  Skraellings.  Com 
ing  presently  to  the  dead  body  of  a  countryman,  —  dead  with  a  stone 
arrow  in  his  brain,  —  she  seized  his  sword  and  was  ready  to  defend 
herself. 

She  did  more  than  this,  for  she  completely  turned  the  tide  of  bat- 
Bravery  of  tie,  an(^  that  ^n  a  wav  which  has  no  parallel  in  any  other 
Freydis.  record  of  Amazonian  exploits.  She  turned  and  faced  the 
advancing  savages  ;  but  instead  of  attacking  them,  she  tore  open  her 
dress,  and  exposing  her  naked  breasts,  beat  them  with  the  sword  with 
the  aspect  and  the  cries  of  a.  fury.  The  Skrjellings,  terrified  at  this 
strange  action,  turned  and  ran  with  all  speed  to  the  canoes,  and  seiz 
ing  the  paddles,  flew,  like  a  flock  of  startled  wild  duck  just  skimming 
the  surface  of  the  water  in  their  swift  flight,  down  the  bay.  Perhaps 
they  thought  the  woman  some  powerful  priestess  whose  incantations 
and  imprecations  would  bring  upon  them  swift  destruction  ;  or  it  may 
be  that  her  frantic  gestures  and  cries,  her  courageous  defiance,  and 
the  exposure  of  her  bare  bosom  to  their  attacks,  daunted  them  be 
cause  it  was  something  they  could  not  understand  ;  but  this  picture  of 
the  fierce  Norse  warriors  flying  before  a  sheep's  paunch  tied  to  the 
end  of  a  pole,  and  owing  their  safety  to  the  fury  of  a  woman  beside 
herself  with  rage,  is  in  ludicrous  contrast  with  the  tradition  of  their 
reckless  and  invincible  courage. 

The  colony  This  was  virtually  the  end  of  Karlsefne's  attempt  at  colo- 
abandoned.  nizatiOn,  though  it  was  not  absolutely  abandoned  till  the 
following  spring,  of  1010.  He  and  his  companions  were  not  again  mo- 


COLONY   OF  THORFINN  KARLSEFNE.  53 

lested  by  the  Skraellings,  but  they  thought  it  not  worth  while  to 
remain  in  a  country,  however  otherwise  desirable,  where  they  were 
liable  to  such  attacks.  This  decision  was  probably  confirmed  by  meet 
ing,  on  one  of  their  excursions,  with  a  Uniped,  who,  after  killing  one 
of  their  number,  fled  out  to  sea.  Such  marvels  were  believed  in  even 
in  a  much  later  and  more  enlightened  age.1  Other  natives  were 
sometimes  met  and  generally  killed,  no  doubt  without  much  com 
punction.  Two  boys  they  took  as  prisoners  were  carried  back  to 
Greenland,  taught  Norse,  and  baptized.  From  them  it  was  learned 
that  there  were  two  kings  over  the  Skraellings,  one  named  Avalidania, 
the  other,  Valldidia  ;  their  people  had  no  houses,  but  lived  in  dens 
and  caves.  In  another  part  of  the  country,  however,  there  was,  they 
said,  another  people,  who  "  wore  white  clothes,  and  shouted  loud,  and 
carried  poles  with  flags."  And  this  was  supposed  to  be  the  White 
Man's  Land,  a  mythical  colony  of  Irish  somewhere  south  of  Vinland.2 

1  Charlevoix  (History  of  New  France,  vol.  i.  pp.  124,  128,  Shea's  edition)  repeats  the 
stories  told  five  centuries  later,  of  voyagers  who  saw  or  heard  of  Unipeds,  —  men  with  only 
one  leg  and  foot,  and  with  two  hands  on  the  same  arm,  —  of  pygmies,  of  giants,  of  men 
who  never  eat,  of  headless  men,  and  of  other  monsters,  of  which,  he  says,  "  it  is  easy  to 
believe  that  there  is  some  exaggeration,  but  it  is  easier  to  deny  extraordinary  facts  than  to 
explain  them." 

'2  The  Northmen  called  the  country  somewhere  south  of  Vinland  the  White  Man's  Land, 
or  Great  Ireland,  and  believed  that  it  was  occupied  by  the  Irish.  Professor  Eafn  supposes 
it  to  have  extended  from  Chesapeake  Bay  to  East  Florida.  One  of  their  narratives  relates 
that  in  the  year  928,  one  Ari  Marson,  an  Icelander,  was  driven  there  by  an  easterly  storm, 
and  was  not  permitted  to  go  away  again.  The  story  came  from  a  Limerick  merchant  and 
from  the  Earl  of  the  Orkneys,  and  it  is  therefore  presumed  that  occasional  intercourse  was 
kept  up  between  the  people  of  this  Hvitramanna-land  and  Europe.  A  romantic  story  is 
also  told  of  one  Bjarni  Asbrandson,  a  famous  viking,  who  was  always  fighting,  or  singing 
songs,  or  making  love.  The  marital  bond  sat  loosely  upon  the  women  of  Iceland,  and  it 
was  nothing  unusual  that  Bjarni  should  overstep  the  limits  of  morality  and  propriety  in 
his  attentions  to  another  man's  wife,  and  that  her  husband  and  his  friends  should  therefore 
attempt  to  kill  him.  The  husband  of  this  woman  Thurid,  Bjarni  seems  to  have  held  in 
great  contempt ;  but  for  her  brother,  Snorri,  the  high-priest,  he  entertained  a  very  different 
feeling.  After  an  encounter  with  him,  in  which  they  botli  showed  a  good  deal  of  magna 
nimity,  Snorri  trying  to  kill  Bjarni  and  failing,  but  frankly  acknowledging  his  intention, 
and  Bjarni  having  it  in  his  power  to  kill  Snorri  but  choosing  not  to  do  so,  it  was  agreed 
between  them  that  Bjarni  should  go  abroad  and  not  see  Thurid  for  a  year.  He  went,  and 
the  vessel  he  sailed  in  was  never  heard  of  afterward.  Thirty  years  later  an  Icelandic  ship 
was  driven  westward  by  a  storm  upon  an  unknown  coast,  where  all  her  people  were  made 
prisoners.  They  were  surrounded  by  a  great  crowd,  and  "  it  rather  seemed  to  them  that 
they  spoke  Irish."  The  prisoners  were  bound  and  taken  inland,  where  they  met,  sur 
rounded  by  a  large  number  of  persons,  a  white-haired  and  martial-looking  chieftain,  with 
a  banner  borne  before  him,  whom  all  treated  with  the  greatest  deference.  He  spoke  to  the 
strangers  in  the  Northern  tongue,  and  when  he  learned  that  they  came  from  Iceland  and 
the  district  of  Bogafiord,  he  asked  for  all  the  principal  men  of  those  parts  by  name,  and 
was  especially  minute  in  inquiries  about  Snorri  the  priest,  Thurid  his  sister,  and  her  son 
Kjartan.  The  prisoners  were  soon  released  by  his  orders,  with  injunctions  to  depart  with 
all  speed  from  that  country  and  never  to  return  again,  or  to  permit  others  to  come  thither. 
As  they  were  about  to  leave,  he  took  from  his  finger  a  gold  ring,  and  putting  that,  and  also 


54  THE   NORTHMEN   IN   AMERICA.  [CHAP.  III. 

Karlsefne  and  his  ship  reached  Greenland  in  safety.  On  board  of 
First  Euro-  ner  was  the  first  child,  so  far  as  is  known,  born  of  European 
bomon'this  psu'entage  on  this  continent.  This  was  Snorri,  the  son  of 
continent.  Karlsefne  and  Gudrid,  born  in  Vinland,  A.  D.  1007.  He  was 
their  only  child,  and  in  him  was  fulfilled  another  of  the  prophecies  of 
Gudrid's  former  husband,  as  he  lay  dead  in  his  bed,  for  in  Snorri 
began  a  long  line  of  distinguished  descendants.1 

There  remains  to  be  briefly  told  the  story  of  Freydis,  with  whom 
ends  all  positive  history  of  these  attempted  settlements  on  the  coast 
of  the  North  American  continent.  Other  voyages,  it  is  supposed,  were 
made  at  different  times  for  the  next  two  centuries,  as  allusions  to  such 
adventures,  though  there  are  no  distinct  narrations,  are,  according  to 
Professor  Rafn,  scattered  through  Icelandic  literature.  It  is  even  con 
jectured  that  the  colony  at  Vinland  may  have  been  kept  alive,  not 
withstanding  the  gloomy  memory  of  the  deeds  of  Freydis,  which 
would,  it  might  be  supposed,  have  made  the  spot  dreaded  as  one 
haunted  by  the  victims  of  the  savage  fury  of  a  cruel  and  unrelenting 
woman.  If  any  efforts,  however,  were  made  to  found  future  colonies, 
they  must  needs  have  been  feeble  and  desultory,  or  they  would  have 
left  some  permanent  signs  behind  them. 

That  Freydis  was  a  fearless  woman  we  have  seen  already  in  her 
encounter  with  the  savages.  It  was  with  her,  at  least,  no  dread  of 
them  that  induced  her  to  return  with  her  countrymen  to  Greenland. 
Greenland,  with  its  savage  rocks,  its  ice-bound  waters,  its  mountains 
of  perpetual  snow,  its  gloomy  fiords,  its  barren  soil,  its  long  winters 
where  the  sun  just  crept  above  the  horizon,  was  to  her  a  poor  ex 
change  for  the  fair,  bright  land  where  the  winters  were  sunshiny  and 
mild  ;  where  the  pleasant  waters  of  its  sequestered  bays  washed,  all  the 
seasons  through,  the  smooth  beaches  of  clean,  white  sand  ;  where  the 
great  oaks,  and  elms,  and  pines,  and  maples  cast  their  grateful  shadows 

a  good  sword,  into  the  hands  of  the  Icelandic  captain,  he  said,  "  If  the  fates  permit  you  to 
come  to  your  own  country,  then  shall  you  take  this  sword  to  the  yeoman,  Kjartan  of  Froda, 
but  the  ring  to  Thurid  his  mother."  When  asked  from  whom  it  should  be  said  these  gifts 
came,  he  answered,  "  Say,  he  sends  them  who  loved  the  lady  of  Froda  better  than  her 
brother,  the  priest  of  Helgafell ;  but  if  any  man  therefore  thinks  that  he  knows  who  has 
owned  these  gifts,  then  say  these  my  words,  that  I  forbid  any  one  to  come  to  me,  for  it  is  the 
most  dangerous  expedition,  unless  it  happens  as  fortunately  with  others  at  the  landing- 
place  as  with  you ;  but  here  is  the  land  great,  and  bad  as  to  harbours,  and  in  all  part 
may  strangers  expect  hostility,  when  it  does  not  turn  out  as  has  been  with  you."  So  say 
ing,  he  turned  away  with  his  banner  waving  over  him.  Gudlief,  the  Icelandic  captain,  on 
his  return,  faithfully  delivered  the  ring  to  Thurid,  the  lady  of  Froda,  and  the  sword  to 
Kjartan  her  son,  who  was  now  supposed  to  be  the  son  of  Bjarni  nlso.  For  it  was  plain 
that  the  stately,  white-hnired  chieftain  of  Hvitramanna-land  was  Bjarni  Asbrandson,  who, 
thirty  years  before,  had  disappeared  from  Iceland. 

1  Thorvaldsen,  the  eminent  Danish  sculptor,  and  Finn  Magnusson,  the  distinguished 
Danish  scholar,  are  among  the  later  descendants  of  Snorri. 


COLONY   OF   FREYDIS. 


55 


over  the  rich  verdure  of  the  meadows,  and  in  the  deep  woods  the 
long  vines,  climbing  to  the  tops  of  the  lofty  trees,  festooned  them 
with  clusters  of  rich  fruit. 

The  restless  woman  had  hardly  reached  home  before  she  set  her  ac 
tive  brain  at  work  to  plan  a  return  to  that  land  of  promise, 

,  Colony  of 

to  reap  a  fresh  harvest  in  the  trade  for  furs  with  the  natives,  *«*<«•• 
in  shiploads  of  timber,  in  boat-loads  of  dried  grapes.  Such  persua 
sions,  however,  were  futile  with  her  own  people,  either  because  they 
knew  as  much  about  Vinland  as  she  did  and  cared  less,  or  because  they 
knew  her  ;  but  they  succeeded  with  two  strangers.  There  came  that 
summer  (1010)  to  Greenland  from  Norway  two  brothers,  Helgi  and 
Finnbogi,  Icelanders,  in  a  ship  of  their  own,  laden  with  merchandise. 


Leif's   Booths. 

Freydis  was  at  home  at  Garde  when  she  heard  of  their  arrival,  but 
she  sought  them  out  at  once,  and  laid  a  proposition  before  them.  An 
expedition  was  agreed  upon  on  joint  and  equal  account.  The  brothers 
were  to  have  thirty  fighting  men  on  board  their  ship,  and  Freydis 
the  same  number,  among  whom  she  permitted  her  husband,  Thor- 
vard,  to  count  one.  Of  Leif,  her  brother,  she  asked  the  gift  of  the 
houses  or  booths  in  Vinland,  built  by  him  ten  years  before,  —  a  gift 
he  declined  to  make,  though  he  was  quite  willing  to  lend  them  to  this 
expedition  as  he  had  to  others.  It  was  a  question  fraught  with  future 
trouble,  for  Freydis  meant  that  these  shelters  should  belong  exclu 
sively  to  her  and  not  to  the  enterprise. 

They  set  sail  in  the  spring  of  1011.     On  board  of  Freydis's  ship 
went  five  more   fighting    men    than    the  stipulated    number,   stowed 


56  THE   NORTHMEN   IN   AMERICA.  [CHAP.  III. 

away  out  of  sight.  Helgi  and  Finnbogi  were  the  first  to  reach  Vin- 
land,  and  before  the  other  ship  arrived  they  had  landed  goods  and 
Leifs  stored  them  in  Leif's  booths,  assuming  that  joint  occupation 

Booths.  wag  a  part  of  the  agreement.  But  when  Freydis  came  and 
found  the  buildings  thus  partially  occupied,  she  resented  it  as  an 
unauthorized  intrusion,  and  high  words  followed  between  her  and  the 
brothers. 

"  Leif  lent  the  houses  to  me,  not  to  you,"  the  woman  asserted. 

"  We  thought  it  was  to  both,"  said  the  brothers. 

They  had  discovered  by  this  time  that  she  had  cheated  them  as  to 
the  number  of  fighting  men  which  each  party  was  to  take,  and  they 
added  that  she  was  more  than  a  match  for  them  with  her  sharp  prac 
tices.  So  they  left  the  booths  to  which  Freydis  claimed  that  she  had 
the  exclusive  right,  built  a  house  for  themselves,  and  into  it  moved 
their  company  and  their  goods. 

The  brothers  were  clearly  of  a  sociable  and  cheerful  disposition, 
desiring  nothing  so  much  as  harmony  and  peace.  It  was  they  who 
yielded  always,  and  Freydis  who  encroached.  Winter  amusement  is 
no  less  a  duty  than  a  pleasure  with  those  who  live  in  high  latitudes, 
when  without  it  men  would  sink  into  apathy  and  despair  in  the  long 
dark  night  of  months,  as  all  Arctic  voyagers  know.  The  good  Ice 
landic  custom  of  "  passing  life  joyfully"  in  the  winter  time  Helgi  and 
Finnbogi  maintained  in  Vinland,  more,  of  course,  to  keep  their  people 
occupied  than  because  of  any  exigency  of  climate.  They  contrived 
games  and  sports  within  doors  and  without,  inviting  the  Freydis  peo 
ple  to  these  diversions,  doing  all  they  could  to  keep  up  a  pleasant  in- 
Discord  in  tercourse  between  the  two  houses.  But  discord  crept  in  ; 
the  colony.  ey^  repOrts  were  circulated  ;  jealousies  and  enmities  were 
aroused  on  the  right  hand  and  on  the  left ;  perhaps  more  even  than 
in  Karlsefne's  time,  two  years  before,  women  were  implicated  in  these 
troubles  ;  one  at  least  was  at  the  bottom  of  them  all,  and  she  was 
unsparing  of  the  rest.  The  games  first  languished,  then  dropped ; 
visits,  friendly  greetings,  intercourse  of  any  kind  between  the  two  com 
panies  became  less  and  less  frequent,  and  finally  ceased  altogether. 
The  evil  influence  was  at  last  triumphant.  The  colony  of  perhaps 
seventy-five  people  divided  into  two  hostile  camps,  hating  each  other, 
ready  to  fly  at  each  other's  throats.  Such  was  the  miserable  state  of 
feeling  nearly  all  winter,  growing  worse  the  longer  it  lasted  ;  none  the 
less  bitter  and  implacable  that  it  was  without  any  visible  and  suffi 
cient  cause. 

When  the  alienation  was  complete,  and  the  mutual  exasperation  at 
its  height,  Finnbogi  was  surprised,  one  day,  to  see,  in  the  dim  twilight 
of  the  early  morning,  Freydis  standing,  silent  and  alone,  in  the  door- 


COLONY   OF  FREYDIS.  57 

way  of  his  house.  He  was  shocked,  perhaps,  as  well  as  surprised,  at 
a  visit  at  such  an  unseemly  hour  ;  but  raising  himself  in  his  bed,  he 
said,  — 

"  What  wilt  thou  here,  Freydis  ?  " 

She  answered,  "  I  wish  that  thou  wouldst  get  up,  and  go  out  with 
me,  for  I  would  speak  with  thee." 

Finnbogi  rose  and  followed  her  to  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  not  far  from 
the  house,  but  out  of  hearing  of  any  one  within,  where  they  sat  down. 

"  How  art  thou  satisfied  here  ?  "  asked  Freydis. 

The  answer  which  Finnbogi  gave  was  unfortunate — even  fatal;  for 
the  question  was  a  leading  one,  and  Freydis  hoped  to  hear  him  say 
that  he  was  not  satisfied  at  all,  and  longed  to  be  gone.  But  he 
said,  — 

"  Well  think  I  of  the  land's  fruitfulness,  but  ill  do  I  think  of  the 
discord  that  has  sprung  up  betwixt  us,  for  it  appears  to  me  that  no 
cause  has  been  given." 

She  artfully  agreed  to  this,  for  her  purpose  evidently  was  to  show 
that  so  great  was  that  discord,  either  one  party  or  the  other  must  go 
away.  Finnbogi's  assertion  gave  little  hope  that,  his  would  be  that 
party.  For  she  said,  — 

"  Thou  sayest  as  it  is,  and  so  think  I ;  but  my  business  here  with 
thee  is,  that  I  wish  to  change  ships  with  thy  brother,  for  ye  have  a 
larger  ship  than  I,  and  it  is  my  wish  to  go  from  hence." 

"  That  must  I  agree  to,  if  such  is  thy  wish,"  was  the  reply.  Then 
the  conference  broke  up. 

This  acquiescence  in  her  departure  and  readiness  to  expedite  it,  on 
the  part  of  Finnbogi,  and  his  avowed  satisfaction  with  the  country, 
which  had  no  drawback  except  this  discord  which  would  be  removed 
by  that  departure,  were  not  what  she  meant  to  get  by  that  early  visit. 
She  must  find  some  other  way,  however  desperate,  of  gaining  her  end. 
Returning  to  her  house  and  bed,  this  misplaced  woman,  so  clearly  fitted 
to  be  a  queen,  determined  to  move  her  husband  to  a  desperate  deed. 
She  had  gone  barefooted  through  the  dew  to  Finnbogi's  house.  The 
Saga  is  careful  to  relate  that  when  she  got  up  "  she  dressed  herself, 
but  took  no  shoes  or  stockings,  and  the  weather  was  such  that  much 
dew  had  fallen  ;  "  but  it  was  also  such  that  "  she  took  her  husband's 
cloak."  So  now  on  her  return,  exasperated  at  the  failure  of  her 
errand,  she  got  into  bed  cold  and  wet,  and  the  sleeping  Thorvard, 
awakened  in  this  unpleasant  way,  demanded  resentfully  why  she  was 
in  this  condition.  She  retorted  angrily,  — 

"  I  was  gone  to  the  brothers,  to  make  a  bargain  with  them  about 
their  ship,  for  I  wished  to  buy  the  large  ship  ;  but  they  took  it  so 
ill,  that  they  beat  me  and  used  me  shamefully ;  but  thou  !  miserable 


58  THE   NORTHMEN   IN    AMERICA.  [CHAP.  III. 

man  !  wilt  surely  neither  avenge  my  disgrace  or  thine  own,  and  it  is 
easy  to  see  that  I  am  no  longer  in  Gi'eenland,  and  I  will  separate  from 
thee  if  thou  avengest  not  this." 

Such  approaches  and  reproaches  could  nc  fc  be  withstood  by  the  pla- 
Murder  of  cable  and  obedient  Thorvard.  V  rith  all  speed  he  called  his 
S}gfi'andnn~  men  to  arms,  and  went  at  once  to  the  house  of  the  brothers, 
their  people  j^  was  y  ef.  ear}v ,  f  or  Freydis  had  lost  no  time,  and  Helgi  and 
Finnbogi,  and  all  their  people,  were  still  asleep.  By  a  sudden  and 
stealthy  attack  Thorvard  and  his  men  overwhelmed  and  bound  them  ; 
one  by  one  they  were  led  from  the  building,  and  one  by  one  they 
were  dispatched  as  they  came  out.  Not  a  man  was  left. 

But  among  them  were  five  women,  and  on  these  no  man  would  lay 
his  hands. 

"  Give  me  an  axe  !  "  shrieked  Freydis. 

The  axe  was  given  her  ;  she  fell  upon  the  five  women,  and  no  man 
stayed  her  hand  ;  and  "  she  did  not  stop  till  they  were  all  dead." 

This  cruel  and  cowardly  work  finished,  they  returned  to  their  own 
dwelling ;  and  Freydis,  says  the  faithful  chronicle,  "  did  not  appear 
otherwise  than  as  if  she  had  done  well."  But,  nevertheless,  it  was  a 
deed  to  be  concealed,  and  she  was  not  the  woman  to  forget  that  neces 
sity  even  at  such  a  moment.  Turning,  therefore,  to  her  people,  she 
gave  them  this  assurance  of  her  future  conduct :  — 

k'  If  it  be  permitted  us,"  she  said,  "  to  come  again  to  Greenland,  I 
will  take  the  life  of  that  man  who  tells  of  this  business  !  Now  should 
we  say  this  —  that  they  remained  behind  when  we  went  away." 

She  was  now  in  sole  command  and  in  sole  possession,  for  Thorvard, 
the  husband,  can  hardly  be  supposed  to  possess  any  will  or  authority 
of  his  own  in  such  a  vigorous  presence.  None  ventured  to  disobey  the 
imperious  and  desperate  woman.  Under  her  stern  rule  the  rest  of  the 
winter  was  spent  in  cutting  timber  and  gathering  together  such  other 
commodities  as  the  country  afforded;  and  so  successful  were  they  in 
this  work,  that  when  the  spring  came  and  they  were  ready  for  depart 
ure,  the  larger  ship  of  the  two  brothers,  which  Freydis  had  so  coveted 
and  had  obtained  at  such  bloody  cost,  was  loaded  with  all  that  she 
could  carry. 

It  was,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  a  gloomy  winter,  though  thus  crowded  with 
oioom  work.  The  silent  and  empty  house  of  Helgi  and  Finnbogi, 
lowed  tfh!f  where,  for  many  weeks,  "life  had  passed  joyfully"  with  games, 
massacre.  an(j  SpOr^Si  ancj  tale,  and  song,  after  the  manner  of  their  coun 
try,  was  always  before  them ;  in  the  murmurs  of  the  lonely  sea,  in  the 
sighs  and  sobs  of  the  winds  in  the  deep  solitude  of  the  melancholy 
woods,  they  heard  the  voices  of  those  late  comrades;  the  graves  of 
almost  as  many  dead  as  they  could  count  of  their  living  company 


SUPPOSED   RELICS   OF   THE  NORTHMEN.  59 

reminded  them  continually  of  that  cowardly  and  cruel  slaughter  of 
defenceless  men  ;  and  visions  would  come  to  sleepless  eyes,  in  the  long 
winter  nights,  of  the  relentless  woman  in  her  naked,  bloody  feet,  with 
her  bare  arms  red  with  blood,  as  she'  cut  down  the  helpless  creatures 
whom  none  else  would  kill,  and  they  were  not  men  enough  to  save. 

But  their  consciences  were  stronger  than  the  threats  or  the  blan 
dishments  of  Freydis  ;  for  though  she  lavished  many  gifts  upon  them 
on  their  return  to  Greenland,  though  she  had  assured  them  she  "  would 
take  the  life  of  that  man  who  told  of  this  business,"  whispers,  never 
theless,  were  soon  abroad  of  frightful  deeds  done  in  Vinland,  and  cir 
culating  swiftly  from  mouth  to  mouth.  These  soon  reached  the  ears 
of  Leif,  who,  seizing  two  of  his  sister's  followers,  put  them  to  the 
torture  and  extorted  a  confession  of  all  the  atrocities  which,  under 
the  leadership  of  Freydis,  had  been  done  in  the  colony.  Then  said 
Leif,  "  I  like  not  to  do  that  to  Freydis,  my  sister,  which  she  has 
deserved,  but  this  will  I  predict,  that  their  posterity  will  never  thrive." 
It  certainly  was  not  a  severe  punishment  for  the  murder  of  thirty-two 
men  and  five  women,  that  no  one  from  that  time  forth  thought  other 
wise  than  ill  of  Freydis  and  her  accomplices.  But  she  disappears  from 
history  with  this  mark  of  execration,  and  with  her  ends  also  essentially 
the  history  of  the  Northmen  in  Vinland  the  Good. 

Enthusiastic  antiquaries  have  sought  to  find  in  the  region  supposed 

to  be  Vinland  some  visible  relics  of  its  several  colonies.     If 

^ei'cs  °^ 
there  were  any   it  would  be  much  more    remarkable  than  Northmen 

•  sought  in 

that  there  are  none,  after  the  lapse  of  nine  hundred  years.   NewEng- 

A  land. 

Leif's  booths,  though  they  were  probably  solid  structures  of 
hewn  timber,  would  hardly  abide  the  onslaughts  of  the  elements  for 
so  many  centuries  ;  and  there  is  no 
intimation  in  any  of   the  narratives 
that  the  Northmen  erected  more  last 
ing  monuments,  to  become,  in 

"  Unswept  stone,  besmeared  with  sluttish  time," 

the  witnesses  of  their  former  presence. 

There  is  at  Newport,  R.  I.,  a  round 

stone  tower,   which   Professor  Rafn 

and  others  believed  was  built  by  the 

Northmen  ;  but  Palfrey,  in  his  "  His-  Newport  Tower. 

tory  of  New  England,"  shows  quite 

conclusively  that  this  is  only  an  old  stone  mill,  erected  by  Governor 
Arnold  late  in  the  seventeeth  century,  who  in  his  will  referred  to  it 
as  "  my  stone-built  wind-mill."  "  Without  doubt,"  says  Dr.  Palfrey, 
with  peculiar  force,  "  it  is  extraordinary  that  no  record  exists  of  the 


60 


THE   NORTHMEN   IN   AMERICA. 


[CHAP.  III. 


erection   of   so   singular  an  edifice    by  early   English   inhabitants   of 
Rhode   Island.     But  it  would  be  much   more   strange  that  the  first 
English  settlers  should  not  have  mentioned  the  fact,  if,  on  their  arri 
val,  they  had  found  a  vestige  of4  a  former  civilization,  so  different  from 
everything  else  within  their  view."     Beside,  the  harbor  of  Newport 
was  undoubtedly  visited   by   more  than  one  voyager  before 
at  Newport    any  permanent  settlement  was  made,  and  it  is  incredible,  if 
AmoWs        the  tower  was  in  existence,  that  it  should  never  have  been 
alluded  to  by  anybody  in  log-book  or  journal,  till  Governor 
Arnold  speaks  of  it  as  his   windmill.      Dr.   Palfrey   says,   moreover, 
that   the  Arnold  family  is  supposed  to  have  come  from  Warwick 
shire,    England.      Governor    Arnold 
had  a  farm  which  he  called  "  Lem- 
mington  Farm;"  and    in  Warwick 
shire  there  is   a  Leamington,  three 
miles  from  which,  at  Chesterton,  is 
a  round  stone  mill,  the  counterpart 
of  that  at  Newport.     The  tradition 
in  regard  to  this  mill  is  that  it  was 
from   a  design  by    Inigo  Jones.     If 
so,  it  was  probably  built  when  Arnold 
was  a  boy,  or  not  long  before,  and 
would   be,   as  the  work  of  an   emi 
nent  architect,  the  admiration  of  the 
country  round    about.     What  more 
natural  than  that  Governor  Arnold, 
when    advanced    in    life,  should   re 
produce,  as   nearly  as  he   could,  an 
edifice    supposed    to    be    a    master 
piece  of  architecture  of  its  kind,  and 
endeared  to  him  by  all  the  memories 
and  associations  of  his  early  home?1 

The  Danish  antiquaries  adduce  also  the  Dighton  Rock,  as  it  is  called, 
as  an  evidence  of  the  visits  of  the  Northmen  to  New  Eng 
land.  This  rock  is  on  the  bank  of  the  Tauntoii  River,  in  the 
town  of  Berkeley,  Mass.,  opposite  Dighton.  Upon  it  are  carved  rude 
hieroglyphics,  which  have  been  an  object  of  curious  interest  for  nearly 
two  centuries.  Various  copies,  differing  much  from  each  other,  have 
been  taken  at  different  times  during  all  bhat  period,  and  some  of  them 
have  been  sent  to  Europe  for  the  consideration  of  learned  societies. 
The  characters  have  been  assumed  to  be  Phoenician,  Scythian,  Roman, 
and  even  Hebrew,  until  the  Danish  antiquaries  pronounced  them  to 

1  See  Palfrey's  History  of  Neiv  England,  p.  56,  et  seq. 


Chesterton    Mil 


Dighton 
Rock. 


SUPPOSED   RELICS   OF   THE   NORTHMEN. 


61 


be  Runic.  They  profess  to  find  the  name  of  Thorfinn  in  the  middle 
of  the  inscription,  in  certain  rude  characters,  some  of  which  are  clearly 
Roman  letters  ;  other  marks  above  are  interpreted  as  signifying  the 
Roman  numerals,  CXXXL,  the  number  of  Thorfinn  Karlsefne's  com 
pany  after  the  desertion  of  Thorhall  and  his  companions ;  below  is  the 
figure  of  an  animal  of  some  sort,  —  perhaps,  if  we  may  make  a  sug 
gestion,  the  bull  that  frightened  the  Skraellings,  —  and  a  ship,  which 
one  must  be  an  antiquary  to  find ;  on  the  right  are  Gudrid  and  her  son 
Snorri,  born  in  Vinland  ;  on  the  left  Karlsefne  himself,  with  a  com 
panion.  These  and  other  fanciful  interpretations  are  held  to  be  a  com 
plete  record  of  the  expedition  of  Karlsefne  and  its  leading  incidents. 


Dighton   Rock. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  rude  pictures  have  been  declared  by  more 
than  one  Indian  chief  to  be  the  record  only  of  a  successful  Indian  hunt  5 
and  General  Washington,  when  ^ 

taken  to  the  rock,  said  the  figures 
resembled  those  he  had  often 
seen  upon  the  buffalo  robes  of 
the  Western  Indians.  The  let 
ters  and  numerals  were  probably 
added  by  another  and  later  art 
ist.  Such  picture-writings  upon 
rocks,  to  commemorate  successful 
hunts  or  successful  fights,  were 
not  uncommon  among  the  In 
dians,  and  they  have  been  found 
in  various  parts  of  the  country.  There  is  an  instance  of  it  on  the 
Virginia  shore  of  the  Ohio  River,  near  Steubenville,  Ohio,1  bearing 

1  Ancient  Monuments  of  the  Mississippi  Valley.     By  Squier  and  Davis. 


Steubenville   Rock. 


62  THE   NORTHMEN   IN   AMERICA.  [CHAP.  III. 

a  marked  resemblance  to  that  of  the  Dighton  Rock.  In  1850,  Mr. 
J.  G.  Bruff  found,  in  the  Sierra  Nevada  Mountains,  a  defile  fifteen  or 
twenty  miles  in  length,  where  the  face  of  the  precipices  was  covered 
with  picture-writing,  some  of  it  on  the  under  surface  of  rocks,  where 
it  could  have  been  done  only  by  the  aid  of  platforms.  These  sculp 
tured  hieroglyphics  are  so  numerous  that  it  is  estimated  to  have  painted 
them  with  a  brush  would  have  required  the  labor  of  many  workmen 
for  several  months.1 

But  the  claim  for  the  discovery  of  America  by  the  Northmen  re 
quires  no  support  from   such  questionable   evidence,  and  is 

Icelandic 

sagas.  Their  rather  injured  than  otherwise  by  a  resort  to  it.  Its  real 
strength  lies  in  the  narratives  themselves,  which,  if  what  is 
claimed  for  them  be  true,  decide  the  question  beyond  controversy. 
The  Icelanders,  like  all  the  Scandinavians,  were  excessively  fond  of 
listening  to  the  poems  of  their  Skalds  and  the  stories  of  their  Saga- 
men.  In  Iceland  and  Greenland,  especially,  condemned  by  the  rigor 
of  the  climate  to  live  an  in-door  life  for  the  larger  part  of  the  year, 
it  was  necessary,  not  merely  "  to  make  life  pass  joyfully,"  but  to 
render  it  tolerable,  to  have  some  other  resource  than  merely  eating 
and  drinking.  They  resorted  to  "  recitals  of  history  "  and  of  songs 
or  poems,  often  of  inordinate  length;  sometimes  mythological,  some 
times  imaginative,  more  generally  tales  of  the  deeds  of  dead  and  living 
heroes ;  often,  no  doubt,  exaggerated  and  adorned,  when  the  deeds 
related  were  of  heroes  listening  to  the  praises  of  their  own  achieve 
ments  ;  but  nevertheless  these  were  faithful  relations,  in  the  main, 
of  actual  occurrences.  This  habit  of  the  people,  degenerating  on  the 
one  hand  into  a  mere  love  of  gossip,  feeding  an  insatiable  appetite 
for  details  of  the  affairs  of  their  neighbors,  on  the  other  hand  pre 
served  every  event  of  interest  or  importance  to  be  handed  down  by 
word  of  mouth  from  generation  to  generation.  When  with  Chris 
tianity  the  Roman  alphabet  was  introduced,  these  Sagas  were  reduced 
to  writing  by  diligent  and  studious  men  ;  inestimable  treasures  laid  up 
for  the  use  of  future  historians. 

Such  records  in  regard  to  the  settlement  of  the  Northmen  on  the 
American  coast  were  known  to  have  been  made,  and  the  fact  was 
frequently  referred  to  by  early  writers.  Thus  Adam  of  Bremen,  who 
wrote  an  ecclesiastical  history  about  the  middle  of  the  eleventh  cen 
tury,  has  a  passage  relating  to  the  subject  which,  if  it  be  not  a  sub 
sequent  interpolation,  of  which  there  is  no  evidence,  is  an  incontestible 
proof  of  the  discovery  of  Vinland.  He  made  a  visit  to  Denmark,  and 
was  informed,  he  says,  by  the  king,  "  that  a  region  called  Vinland  had 
been  found  by  many  in  that  ocean,  because  there  vines  grew  spon- 

1  Smithsonian  Report,  1873,  p.  409. 


EVIDENCE   OF   THE   ICELANDIC   SAGAS.  63 

taneously,  making  the  best  wine  ;  for  that  fruits  grow  there  which 
were  not  planted,  we  know,  not  by  mere  rumor,  but  by  the  positive 
report  of  the  Danes."  But,  though  several  historians  of  different  coun 
tries,  who  have  written  within  the  last  two  hundred  years,  have  rec 
ognized  that  this  discovery  was  actually  made,  the  details  of  so  inter 
esting  a  fact  were  not  fully  known  until  the  different  narratives  were 
gathered  together  by  the  Northern  Antiquarian  Society  of  Denmark, 
and  published  in  a  single  volume.1 

The  fullest  and  most  important  of  these  relations  exist  in  manu 
script,  in  a  collection  known  as  the  "Codex  Flatoiensis,"  written  be 
tween  the  years  1387  and  1395.  These,  now  preserved  in  the  Royal 
Library  at  Copenhagen,  were  found  in  a  monastery  on  the  Island  of 
Flato  —  on  the  west  coast  of  Iceland,  —  where  they  had  lain  forgotten 
and  unnoticed  for  centuries.  There  is  no  serious  question  now  of  the 
authenticity  of  these  Sagas,  as  whatever  doubt  may,  at  one  time,  have 
been  entertained  has  been  effectually  put  to  rest.  Like  other  chron 
icles,  relating  to  the  early  history  of  Greenland  and  Iceland,  of  Swe 
den  and  Norway,  they  were  long  preserved  by  oral  tradition,  from  cen 
tury  to  century,  and  at  length  committed  to  writing,  long  after  the 
time  to  which  they  referred.  The  main  facts  related  in  them  are  un 
questionably  true  ;  the  incongruities,  discrepancies,  and  even  absur 
dities  which  can  be  pointed  out,  are  such  as  would  inevitably  occur  in 
verbal  repetitions,  for  nearly  three  centuries,  of  the  circumstantial 
details  of  distant  voyages  and  adventures ;  and  such  errors,  moreover, 
are  incontestible  evidence  that  the  narratives  were  not  constructed  for 
a  purpose  long  after  the  date  of  a  pretended  event,  but  are  veritable 
relations  of  actual  occurrences  told  by  those  who  took  part  in  them, 
and  unconsciously  changed  by  those  who  repeated  them,  from  time 
to  time,  on  points  which  seemed  to  them  of  little  interest  or  im 
portance.  Not  less  conclusive  is  the  simplicity,  sometimes  even  child 
ishness,  of  the  narratives,  —  the  preservation  of  unimportant  partic 
ulars,  remarkable  only  for  their  singularity,  so  characteristic  of  all 
uncultivated  people,  who,  like  children,  delight  in  marvels  and  are 
captured  by  novelty. 

1  Antiquilates  Americana,  sive  Scriptores  Septentrlonales  Rerum  Columbianarum  in  America. 
Samling  afde  i  Nordens  Old-skrifter,  etc.,  etc.  Edidit  Societas  Regia  Antiquariorum  Sep. 
teutrionalium.  Copenhagen:  Hafhiae,  1837. 


The  Sea  of  Darkness. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


FEE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES   WESTWARD. 

ARABIAN  SAILORS  ON  THE  SEA  OF  DARKNESS.  —  WELSH  TRADITION  OF  AMERICAN 
DISCOVERY.  —  VOYAGE  OF  MADOC,  PRINCE  OF  WALES.  —  EVIDENCE  ADDUCED. — 
SUPPOSED  TRACES  OF  WELSH  AMONG  DOEGS,  MANDANS,  AND  MOUND  BUILDERS. — 
NARRATIVE  OF  THE  BROTHERS  ZENI.  —  SHIPWRECK  OF  NICOLO  ZENO  AT  FRISLAND. 
—  His  ACCOUNT  OF  ENGRONELAND.  —  ADVENTURES  OF  A  FRISLAND  FISHERMAN. — 
THE  WESTERN  VOYAGE  OF  PRINCE  ZICHMNI.  —  CHINESE  DISCOVERY  OF  FUSANG. 
— STATE  OF  NAUTICAL  AND  GEOGRAPHICAL  KNOWLEDGE  BEFORE  COLUMBUS. 

IN  the  town  of  Bristol,  England,  there  is  a  suburb  called  Cathay, 
so  preserving  the  memory  of  that  prosperous  time  when  Bristol,  next 
to  London,  was  the  richest  and  most  important  city  of  the  kingdom, 
—  of  that  proud  period  when  her  merchants  carried  on  a  thriving 
trade  with  the  Indies,  before  Columbus  sailed  to  find  a  Western  pas 
sage  to  the  far  East.  So  in  Lisbon,  as  late  as  the  beginning  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  there  was  a  street  called  Almagrurin,  —  which 
means  in  English  "Those  that  go  astray,"  —  so  named  in  commem 
oration  of  a  bold  adventure  of  some  Arab  sailors,  who  had  ventured 


ARABIAN   SAILORS    ON   THE    SEA.   OF   DARKNESS.  65 

further  toward  the  Sea  of  Darkness  than  any  others  were  known  to 
have  sailed  before.1 

.  The  Arab  geographers  relate  the  incident,  the  memory  of  which 
the  street  preserves,  and  some  historians  have  found  in  it  a  sugges 
tion  of  possible  American  discovery,  as  early  as  the  twelfth  century, 
and  far  south  of  the  colony  at  Vinland.  Lisbon  was  then  still  in  pos 
session  of  the  Arabs,  who,  above  all  other  people  of  that  period,  were 
students  of  geometry  and  astronomy,  applied  those  sciences  to  geog 
raphy  and  navigation,  and  were  the  boldest  sailors  of  the  age.  Eight 
of  these  hardy  and  well-instructed  men,  bound  together  by 
ties  of  relationship,  determined  to  explore  that  mighty  and  of^ghYlrab 
mysterious  ocean  which  stretched  from  the  coast  of  Portugal  Ba 
to  the  setting  sun,  on  whose  western  horizon  no  sail  ever  crept  up 
against  the  sky,  or  disappeared  from  sight  beneath  its  waters. 

Building  themselves  a  vessel,  they  put  on  board  provisions  for  sev 
eral  months,  showing  thereby  a  determination  that  their  explorations 
should  not  be  cut  short  for  want  of  time.  Taking  an  east  wind  they 
steered  fearlessly  westward,  and  after  eleven  days  their  ship  ploughed 
into  a  sea  thick  with  grass,  concealing,  as  they  thought,  many  reefs 
of  sunken  rocks,  and  giving  forth  a  fetid  smell.  They  imagined  that 
the  light  of  the  sun  was  failing  them  as  they  approached  the  confines 
of  that  dreary  sea,  whose  mysterious  waters,  they  did  not  doubt,  in 
accordance  with  the  belief  of  the  time,  were  concealed  in  perpetual 
night,  haunted  by  demons,  and  filled  with  strange  creatures  of  mon 
strous  shapes.  Alarmed  at  these  portents,  they  turned  their  vessel's 
head  southward,  and  in  twelve  days  more  reached  an  island  which 
they  named  El  Ghanam,  meaning  "small  cattle,"  because  they  found 
upon  it  numerous  flocks  of  sheep.  Here  they  landed,  but  saw  no 
people.  Some  of  the  sheep  they  killed,  but  the  flesh  was  so  bitter  as 
to  be  unfit  for  food,  and  they  found  nothing  else  worth  taking  except 
figs  and  fresh  water. 

Then  they  sailed  away  again  southward ;  at  the  end  of  twelve  days, 
on  approaching  an  island  the  people  came  out  to  meet  them 
in  boats  and  made  them  all  prisoners.    When  taken  on  shore  incidents  of 
they  were  carried  before  the  king  of  the  country,  who,  on 
hearing  through  an  interpreter,  who  spoke  Arabic,  the  object  of  their 
voyage,  laughed  at  them  heartily  for  their  folly.     His  father,  he  told 
them,  had  once  sent  slaves  into  that  Western  Ocean,  who,  after  cruis 
ing  about  for  a  month,  lost  sight  of  the  sun,  and  thus  were  compelled 
to  return  without  the  voyage   profiting   them  anything.     From  this 
interview  the  Arabs  were  dismissed  to  prison  ;  but  as  soon  as  the  wind 

1  Notices  et  Extraits  de  la  Bibliotheque  du  Roi,  cited  in  The  History  of  The  New  World  by 
Don  Juan  Baptista  Munoz,  p.  119 


66  PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES   WESTWARD.       [CHAP.  IV. 

veered  to  the  west  they  were  put,  blindfolded  and  pinioned,  into  a 
boat,  carried  out  to  sea,  and  abandoned  to  the  mercy  of  the  winds 
and  waves.  They  drifted,  within  three  days,  upon  the  mainland  of 
Africa,  where  they  were  kindly  treated  by  the  natives  —  Berbers  — 
and  whence  they  returned  to  Lisbon.  Thereafter  they  were  known 
among  their  countrymen  as  uthe  strayed  ones."  l 

From  the  direction  in  which  these  Arabs  had  sailed,  and  from  the 
length  of  their  voyage,  the  most  reasonable  supposition  is  that  they 
first  reached  the  Madeira  group,  where  the  flesh  of  the  wild  goat  is 
bitter,  as  the  animals  browse  on  a  plant  called  la  coquerel?  and 
that  the  next  land  they  saw  was  the  Cape  Verde  Islands.  But 
the  natives  of  that  country  they  described  as  of  a  red  color,  with 
straight  black  hair,  and  for  this  reason,  and  because  some  of  the  ac 
counts  have  given  the  voyage  as  being  thirty  or  five  and  thirty  days, 
instead  of  twelve,  before  land  was  reached,  it  has  been  supposed  that 
these  wanderers  had  touched  the  shores  of  America  or  some  of  the 
islands  upon  its  coast.  If,  however,  the  narrative  of  Edrisi,  the 
Arabian  geographer,  be  accepted  as  authentic,  according  to  the  trans 
lation  which  we  have  followed,  the  course  pursued  by  these  Arabs 
from  Lisbon  could  hardly  have  taken  them  to  the  westward  of  the 
Azores.  One  claim,  therefore,  to  the  discovery  of  the  western  world, 
whether  by  accident  or  design,  before  the  voyages  of  the  navigators 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  may  be  held  to  be  disposed  of. 

The  tradition  that  America  was  discovered  about  the  year  1170  by 
a  Welsh  prince  named  Madog,  or  Madoc,  is  still  more  cir- 
Of  America  cumstantial,  and  attempts  to  support  it  by  later  evidence 
have  been  made  from  time  to  time  for  the  last  two  hundred 
years.  Even  so  cautious  and  judicial  a  critic  as  Humboldt  says  in 
allusion  to  it :  "  I  do  not  share  the  scorn  with  which  national  tradi 
tions  are  too  often  treated,  and  am  of  the  opinion  that  with  more 
research  the  discovery  of  facts,  entirely  unknown,  would  throw  much 
light  on  many  historical  problems." 

Certainly  we  are  not  to  forget  the  distinction  between  a  tradition 
and  an  invention  ;  it  is  impossible  to  establish  the  one,  and,  as  a  lie 
can  never  be  made  the  truth,  it  is  not  worth  repeating  ;  but  the  other 
is  an  honest  relation,  accepted  as  such  by  those  who  first  repeated  it, 
and  which  may  yet  be  sustained  by  evidence.  This  tradition  re 
lating  to  Madoc  had,  no  doubt,  some  actual  basis  of  truth,  however 
much  it  may  have  been  misapprehended  ;  the  evidence  adduced  from 
time  to  time  in  support  of  it  has  been  believed  by  many,  and  is  curious 

1  Edrisi,  the  Arabian  geographer's  account  of  The  Voyage  of  the  Arabs,  in  Major's  Life  of 
Prince  Henry  the  Navigator,  p.  147  et  seq.     Humboldt's  Examen  Critique,  p.  137,  T.  2. 

2  Berthelot's  Natural  History  of  the  Canaries,  quoted  from  M.  d'Avezac  by  Major, 


THE   WELSH   TRADITION. 


67 


and  entertaining ;  the  tradition  itself  in  its  original  baldness  has  found 
a  place  in  historical  narrative  for  three  hundred  years ;  for  each  and 
all  of  these  reasons  it  demands  brief  consideration. 

The  story  was  first  related  in  Caradoc's  "  History  of  Wales,"  pub 
lished  by  Dr.  David  Powell  in  1584.     Caradoc's  history,  however, 
came  down  only  to  1157,  and  Humphrey  Llwyd  (Lloyd),  who  trans 
lated  it,  added  the  later  story  of  Madoc.     Lloyd  received 
it  from  Guttun  Owen,  a  bard  who,  about  the  year  1480,  t^th0"*" 
copied  the  registers  of  current  events  which,  as  late  as  the 
year  1270,  were  kept  in  the  Abbeys  of  Conway,  North  Wales,  and 
StratFlur,  South 
Wales,  and  com 
pared      together 
every  three  years 
by  the  bards  be 
longing    to    the 
two  houses.  An- 


Welsh   Bard. 

other  bard,  Cynfrig  ab  Gronow,  referred  to  the  tradition  of  western 
discovery  by  Madoc  about  the  same  time  with  Owen  ;  and  another 
allusion  to  it  is  claimed  in  the  following  lines  —  literally  translated  — 
written  three  years  earlier  by  Sir  Meredyth  ab  Rhy  :  — 

"  On  a  happy  Hour,  I,  on  the  water, 
Of  Mannaers  mild,  the  Huntsman  will  be, 
Madog  bold  of  pleasing  Countenance, 
Of  the  true  Lineage  of  Owen  Gwyned. 
I  coveted  not  Land,  my  Ambition  was, 
Not  great  Wealth,  but  the  Seas." 1 

This  may  certainly  be  accepted  as  conclusive  evidence,  at  least,  that 
the  mild-mannered  and  good-looking  prince  was  fond  of  the  sea ;  but 
it  is  difficult  to  find  anything  else  in  it  that  can  be  supposed  to  refer 
to  the  discovery  of  America.  The  only  real  authorities  may  properly 

1  Williams's  Enquiry. 


PltE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES   WESTWARD.       [CHAP.  IV. 

be  considered  as  reduced  to  two  —  the  bards  Guttun  Owen  and  Cyn- 
frig  ab  Gronow.1 

The  story  is  briefly  this :  When  Owen  Gwynedd,  Prince  of  North 
Wales,  was  gathered  to  his  fathers,  a  strife  arose  among  his  sons  as  to 
who  should  reign  in  his  stead.  The  eldest  legitimate  son,  Edward, 
was  put  aside,  or  put  himself  aside,  as  unfit  to  govern,  "  because  of 

the  inaime  upon  his  face,"  —  ho  was  known 
as  u  Edward  with  the  broken-nose," —  and 
the  government  was  seized  by  Howel  who 
was  illegitimate,  "  a  base  son  begotten  of 
an  Irish  woman."  But  the  next  brother, 
David,  refused  allegiance  to  this  Howel, 
and  civil  war  followed.  At  length  the 
usurper  was  killed  in  battle,  and  the  right 
ful  heritage  established,  David  holding  the 
reins  of  government  as  regent  till  the  son 
of  Edward,  the  eldest  brother,  was  of  age. 
In  this  contention  Madoc  took  no  part,  but 
endeavored  to  escape  from  it ;  which,  in- 
oavid,  Prince  of  Wales.  asmuch  as  it  was  a  struggle  for  the  lineal 

succession  of    his  family,  was  not  much  to  his  credit.     Leaving  his 

1  Compare  Lyttleton's  History  of  Henry  1 1.,  vol.  vi.  An  Enquiry  Concerning  the  First  Dis 
covery  of  America,  by  John  Williams,  LL.  D.  London,  1791.  Jones's  Musical  RelicTcs  of 
Welsh  Bards,  vol.  i.  From  Dr.  Powell's  History,  Hakluyt  copied  the  story  at  length,  — 
referring  also  to  Guttun  Owen,  —  asserting,  however,  in  his  first  edition,  of  1589,  that  the 
land  which  Madoc  reached  was,  in  his  opinion,  Mexico  ;  in  his  second  edition,  of  1600,  that 
it  was  some  part  of  the  West  Indies.  In  this,  as  in  most  other  accounts  of  early  voyagers, 
later  writers  have  followed  Hakluyt.  But  here,  Dr.  Belknap  interposes  a  word  of  caution. 
"The  design,"  he  says,  "  of  his  (Hakluyt)  bringing  forward  the  voyage  of  Madoc  appears, 
from  what  he  says  of  Columbus,  to  have  been  the  asserting  of  a  discovery  prior  to  his,  and 
consequently  the  right  of  the  Crown  of  England  to  the  sovereignty  of  America ;  a  point  at 
that  time  warmly  contested  between  the  two  nations.  The  remarks  which  the  same  author 
makes  on  several  other  voyages,  evidently  tend  to  the  establishment  of  that  claim."  [Amer 
ican  Bioi/raphy,  etc.,  by  Jeremy  Belknap,  p.  65. J  While  of  Powell,  from  whom  Hakluyt 
copies,  Robertson  says  :  "  The  memory  of  a  transaction  so  remote  must  have  been  very  im 
perfectly  preserved,  and  would  require  to  be  confirmed  by  some  author  of  greater  credit, 
and  nearer  to  the  sera  of  Madoc's  voyage  than  Powell."  [Robertson's  History  of  America, 
vol.  ii.,  note  17.]  Thus  the  story  at  the  outset  has  to  contend  with  a  reflection  upon  the 
credibility  of  the  author  who  first  promulgated  it,  and  upon  the  motive  of  him  on  whose 
authority  it  has  generally  been  repeated.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  the  registers  of  the 
Welsh  abbeys  of  Conway  and  Strat  Flur,  copied  by  Guttun  Owen,  and  the  statement  of  Cyn- 
frig  ab  Gronow,  upon  which  Powell,  or  rather  Humphrey  Llwyd,  the  translator  of  Caradoc's 
History,  relied  as  authority  for  the  tradition.  The  writings  of  these  bards  are  supposed  to 
be  lost ;  but  if  they  really  related  the  story,  the  trustworthiness  of  Powell,  and  the  motives 
of  Hakluyt,  are  of  no  importance  whatever,  as  it  was  told  by  the  earlier  writers  twelve 
years  before  Columbus  made  his  first  voyage.  If  Madoc's  discovery  —  supposing  there  were 
any  —  was  made  upon  knowledge,  that  knowledge  could  only  have  come  from  Iceland  or 
Greenland. 


MADOC'S  VOYAGE   AND   HIS   COLONY. 


69 


brothers  (about  1170)  to  fight  it  out  among  them,  he  got  together  a 
fleet  and  put  to  sea  in  search    of   adventures.     He   sailed 

IT          •  TIT  i  Historical 

westward,  leaving  Ireland  to  the  north,   which,   it  mav  be    acc°unt  of 

•  Madoc's 

remarked,  is  nearly  the  only  thing  he  could  do  in  sailing  ™yage- 
from  Wales,  unless  he  laid  his  course  northward  through  the  Irish 
Sea.  But  at  length  he  came  to  an  unknown  country,  where  the 
natives  differed  from  any  people  he  had  ever  seen  before,  and  all 
things  were  strange  and  new.  Seeing  that  this  land  was  pleasant  and 
fertile,  he  put  on  shore  and  left  behind  most  of  those  in  his  ships 
and  returned  to  Wales. 

Coming  among  his  friends  again,  after  so  eventful  a  voyage,  he  told 
them  of  the  fair  and  extensive  region  he  had  found  ;  there,  he  assured 
them,  all  could  live  in  peace  and  plenty,  instead  of  cutting  each  other's 


Madoc  leaving  Wales. 

throats  for  the  possession  of  a  rugged  district  of  rocks  and  mountains. 
The  advantages  he  offered  were  so  obvious,  or  his  eloquence  The  Welgh 
so  persuasive,  that  enough  determined  to  go  with  him  to  fill  Colony, 
ten  ships.  There  is  no  account  of  their  ever  having  returned  to 
Wales  ;  but  on  the  contrary,  it  is  said,  "  they  followed  the  manners  of 
the  land  they  came  to,  and  used  the  language  they  found  there,"  — 
a  statement  which,  if  true,  shows,  not  only  that  they  did  not  return, 
but  that  some  intercourse  was  preserved  with  their  native  land. 
Their  numbers,  nevertheless,  must  have  been  sufficient  to  have  formed 
a  considerable  colony,  and  if,  as  the  narrative  asserts,  the  new  country 
"  was  void  of  inhabitants  "  —  meaning,  probably,  that  it  was  only 
sparsely  peopled  —  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  they  could  have 
become  so  entirely  assimilated  to  the  savages  as  to  lose  their  own  cus 
toms  and  their  own  tongue. 


70  PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES   WESTWARD.       [CHAP.  IV. 

Moreover,  if  such  were  the  fact  it  destroys  all  other  evidence,  which 
was  supposed  to  be  subsequently  found,  of  the  existence  of  such  a 
colony.  That  supposed  evidence  is,  that  a  tribe  of  Indians  of  light 
complexion  and  speaking  the  old  British  language,  was  found  within 
the  present  limits  of  the  United  States  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
that  traces  of  such  a  people  were  still  evident  at  a  quite  recent  period. 

The  earliest  testimony  on  this  point  is  a  letter 1  to  Dr.  Thomas 
Lloyd,  of  Pennsylvania,  and  by  him  transmitted  to  his  brother,  Mr. 
C.  H.  S.  Lloyd,  in  Wales.  The  letter  purported  to  have  been  written 
by  the  Rev.  Morgan  Jones,  and  was  dated  New  York,  March 
to  its  exist-  10th,  1685-6,  more  than  half  a  century  before  its  publication 
in  the  Magazine.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Jones  declares  that  in  the 
year  1660  —  twenty-five  years  before  the  date  of  the  letter  —  he  was 
sent  as  chaplain  of  an  expedition  from  Virginia  to  Port  Royal,  South 
Carolina,  where  he  remained  eight  months.  Suffering  much  from 
want  of  food,  he  and  five  others  at  the  end  of  that  time  started  to 
return  to  Virginia  by  land.  On  the  way  they  were  taken  prisoners 
by  an  Indian  tribe,  the  Tuscaroras,  and  condemned  to  die.  On  hear 
ing  this  sentence,  Mr.  Jones  "  being  very  much  dejected,"  exclaimed 
"  in  the  British  (i.  e.  Welsh)  tongue,"  "  Have  I  escaped  so  many 
dangers,  and  must  I  now  be  knocked  on  the  Head  like  a  Dog."  Im 
mediately  he  was  seized  around  the  waist  by  a  War  Captain,  belong 
ing  to  the  Doegs,  and  assured  in  the  same  language  that  he  should 
not  die.  He  was  immediately  taken  to  the  "  Emperor  of  the  Tusca 
roras,"  and,  with  his  five  companions,  ransomed.  The  providential 
Doeg  took  them  to  his  own  village,  where  they  were  kindly  welcomed 
and  hospitably  entertained.  For  four  months  Mr.  Jones  remained 
among  these  Indians,  often  conversing  with  them,  and  preaching  to 
them  three  times  a  week  in  the  British  language.  The  conclusion  is 
that  these  Indians  were  descendants  of  the  Welsh  colonists  under 
Madoc. 

The  Mr.  Lloyd  to  whom  this  letter  was  sent,  subsequently  adduced 
some  oral  and  hearsay  testimony,  to  the  same  effect ;  as,  for  ex 
ample,  that  a  sailor  declared  he  had  met  with  some  Indians  on  the 
coast,  somewhere  between  Virginia  and  Florida,  who  informed  him 
in  good  Welsh,  that  their  people  came  from  Gwynedd,  North  Wales. 
But  such  testimony  is  so  vague  that  it  may  be  set  aside  without  hesi 
tation,  leaving  the  letter  of  Mr.  Jones  the  sole  evidence  of  this  Welsh 
survival  on  this  continent,  within  the  first  century  of  its  settlement  by 
the  English.  In  the  next  century,  however,  there  came  forth  fresh 
witnesses. 

First.  A  missionary  from  New  York,  a  Mr.  Charles  Beatty,  travel- 

1  First  published  in  The  (London)  Gentleman's  Magazine,  vol.  x.,  1740. 


SUPPOSED   TRACES    OF   THE   WELSH.  71 

ling  in  1776,  to  the  Southwest,  four  or  five  hundred  miles,  though  he 
did  not  himself  see  any  of  these  Welsh  Indians,  met  with  several 
others  who  had  seen  and  talked  with  them.  A  Mr.  Benjamin  Sutton 
assured  him  that  he  had  visited  an  Indian  town  on  the  west  side  of 
the  Mississippi,  whose  people  were  not  so  tawny  as  other  natives, 
and  whose  language  was  the  Welsh.  They  had  a  book  which  they 
cherished  with  great  care,  though  none  among  them  could  read  it, 
which  Mr.  Sutton  assumed  to  be  a  Welsh  Bible,  — manuscript,  it  must 
have  been,  as  the  art  of  printing  was  not  invented  when  Madoc  is 
supposed  to  have  left  Wales,  in  1170.  One  Levi  Hicks,  who  had 
been  among  Indians  from  his  youth,  also  told  Mr.  Beatty  that  he  had 
visited  such  a  town  west  of  the  Mississippi,  where  the  language 
spoken,  he  was  informed,  was  Welsh  ; 
and  Joseph,  Mr.  Beatty's  interpreter, 
had  seen  natives  whom  he  supposed 
to  be  of  the  same  tribe,  and  who, 
he  was  sure,  spoke  Welsh,  because 
he  had  some  little  knowledge  of  that 
tongue.  Mr.  Beatty,  in  repeating 
these  statements,  relates,  in  corrobo- 
ration  of  them,  the  story  of  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Jones,  adding  to  it,  however, 
that  that  clergyman  had  also  found 
a  Welsh  Bible  in  possession  of  the 
Doegs,  which  they  could  not  read, 
but  held  him  in  all  the  more  esteem 

1  .  Welshman. 

because  he  could,  —  a  circumstance 

which  Mr.  Jones  does  not  mention  in  his  letter,  but  would  hardly 

have  omitted  had  it  been  true. 

Second.  In  1785  was  published  a  narration  by  a  Capt.  Isaac  Stew 
art,  to  the  effect  that,  having  been  taken  prisoner  by  the  Indians,  with 
a  Welshman  named  David,  about  the  year  1767,  they  were  carried 
seven  hundred  miles  up  the  Red  River,  when  they  came  to  "  a  nation 
of  Indians  remarkably  white,  and  whose  hair  was  of  a  red  color,  —  at 
least,  mostly  so."  The  Welshman  found  these  people  were  of  his  own 
race.  Their  story  was  that  their  forefathers  came  from  a  foreign 
country  and  landed  on  a  coast  east  of  the  Mississippi,  which,  from  the 
description,  must  have  been  Florida.  When  afterward  the  Spaniards 
took  possession  of  Mexico  they  fled  west  of  the  Mississippi,  and  up 
the  Red  River ;  and,  as  an  evidence  of  the  truth  of  this  account,  they 
showed  to  Captain  Stewart  some  rolls  of  parchment,  covered  with 
writing  in  blue  ink,  which  they  kept  wrapped  up  in  skins  with  great 
care.  Unfortunately  neither  Captain  Stewart  nor  his  Welsh  com 
panion  could  read  these  precious  documents. 


72  PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES   WESTWARD.       [CHAP.  IV. 

Third.  Mr.  Williams,  the  author  of  "  An  Enquiry  Concerning  the 
First  Discovery  of  America  by  the  Europeans,"  from  whose  book  we 
condense  these  narratives,  asserts  on  an  authority  for  which  he  vouches 
as  respectable  and  truthful,  that  a  Welshman,  living  on  the  banks  of 
the  Ohio,  declares,  in  a  letter  dated  October  1,  1778,  that  he  had  been 
several  times  among  Indians  who  spoke  the  old  British,  and  that  he 
knew  of  another  person  in  Virginia  who  had  visited  a  tribe  of  Welsh 
Indians  living  on  the  Missouri  River,  four  hundred  miles  above  its 
junction  with  the  Mississippi. 

Such,  it  has  been  assumed,  is  the  conclusive  evidence  that  the  de 
scendants  of  Madoc  and  his  companions,  who  migrated  from  Wales  in 
1170,  were  seen  about  five  hundred  years  later  —  in  1660  —  some 
where  between  Jamestown,  Virginia,  and  Port  Royal,  South  Caro 
lina,  having  carefully  preserved  their  nationality  and  language.  That 
about  one  hundred  years  afterward  —  in  1767  —  the  same  tribe,  or 
others  of  the  same  lineage,  were  living  on  the  Red  River,  seven  hun 
dred  miles  from  its  mouth,  still  speaking  the  Welsh  tongue ;  that  ten 
years  afterward  a  similar  people,  with  the  same  language,  were  seen 
by  two  witnesses  somewhere  in  the  same  region  ;  that  ten  years  later 
still,  another  person  knew  of  a  similar  tribe  on  the  Missouri ;  and  that 
Indians  had  been  met  with  by  other  persons  at  various  times  and  in 
various  places,  who  spoke  Welsh.  The  discrepancies  in  the  accounts, 
—  save  the  one  remarkable  fact  that  some  of  the  witnesses  observe 
that  these  Indians  were  white,  while  others  do  not  mention  a  pe 
culiarity  so  striking  that  it  could  hardly  fail,  if  it  existed,  to  excite 
their  wonder,  —  are  not  greater  than  are  consistent  with  truth  under 
the  ordinary  rules  of  evidence.  But  the  one  point  on  which  they  all 
agree  —  the  speaking  of  ancient  British  —  is  the  most  formidable 
argument,  and  by  the  probability  of  its  truth  all  these  narratives  can 
be  most  conclusively  tested. 

The  thorough  exploration  of  all  the  territory  of  the  United  States 
within  the  last  half  century  has  left  little  to  be  learned  of  any  of  the 
Indian  tribes,  and  there  are  none  among  them  known  to  speak  a 
tongue  which  would  be  recognized  as  Welsh.  Yet  if  there  was  such 
a  tribe  a  hundred,  or  even  two  hundred  years  ago,  who  had  for  six 
hundred  years  preserved  their  language  when  surrounded  by  a  savage, 
alien  race,  it  is  hardly  possible  that  a  century  later,  such  a  people 
could  have  become  so  utterly  extinct,  or  so  absorbed  by  savages  whose 
influence  they  had  so  long  resisted,  as  to  leave  no  certain  trace  of  their 
origin. 

But  all  that  is  pretended  by  the  later  inquirers  is,  that  a  tribe  of 
Indians,  the  Mandans,  showed,  if  not  traces  of  an  intermixture  with 
the  blood  of  the  whites,  at  least  a  marked  difference  between  themselves 


SUPPOSED   TRACES   OF   THE   WELSH.  73 

and  other  native  tribes.  Among  them  were  in  use  certain  words  in 
which  is  a  resemblance,  or  a  fancied  resemblance,  to  the  old  British 
language.  In  the  manufacture  of  their  pottery,  and  in  the  making  of 
blue  beads,  they  are  said  to  have  shown  a  superiority  over 
the  ordinary  savage.  Mr.  Catlin  believed  them  to  be  a  cross  theory  and8 
between  the  Indians  and  the  Welsh,  and  is  inclined  to  ac-  argument 
cept  a  theory,  favored  also  by  some  other  writers,  that  the  Mandans 
are  the  descendants  of  the  Mound  Builders,  and  that  the  builders 
of  those  numerous  earth- works  were  the  people  originating  in  Madoc's 
Colony.1  The  boat  they  used,  Catlin  says,  was  more  like  the  coracle 
of  the  Welsh  than  the  canoe  of  other  Indians ;  and  he  asserts  that  in 
complexion,  in  the  color  of  their  hair  and  eyes,  they  seemed  rather 


Mandan    Boats. 

to  be  allied  to  the  white  than  the  red  race.  Even  the  late  Albert 
Gallatin,  deservedly  a  high  authority  on  any  point  relating  to  the 
North  American  Indians,  acknowledges  that  a  chief  of  this  tribe  whom 

1  Messrs.  Lewis  and  Clarke,  in  their  expedition  across  the  continent,  passed  the  winter  of 
1 804-5,  among  the  Mandans  and  other  Indians  on  the  Upper  Missouri ;  but  there  is  nothing 
in  their  journal  to  indicate  that  they  observed  those  striking  differences  in  complexion,  in 
character,  and  customs,  between  the  Mandans  and  other  tribes,  which  Catlin  describes 
at  great  length.  The  method  of  making  the  beads  which  Mr.  Catlin  considers  so  sig 
nificant  a  fact,  Lewis  and  Clarke  say  was  known  to  the  Ricarees  as  well  as  to  the  Man- 
dans.  As  the  material  used  was  pounded  glass,  the  process  must  have  come  into  use  since 
the  introduction  of  glass  by  modern  Europeans,  and  not  have  been  handed  down  from  the 
Welsh.  To  pound  up  glass,  however,  and  make  it  into  a  new  form,  is  an  indication  of  ex 
traordinary  intelligence  in  a  North  American  Indian.  The  Mandan  tradition  of  their 
origin  is,  that  the  nation  once  lived  under  ground,  near  a  lake.  A  grape-vine  extending  its 
root  through  the  earth  reached  their  village  and  let  in  the  light  of  day.  Some  of  the 
more  daring  climbed  up  this  root,  and,  to  their  astonishment  and  delight,  came  out  upon 
a  country  charming  to  look  upon,  rich  in  fruits  of  various  kinds,  and  covered  with  great 
herds  of  buffaloes.  The  grapes  which  they  carried  back,  and  their  report  of  the  delights  of 
that  upper  region,  set  the  whole  nation  wild  to  ascend  and  take  possession  of  a  land  so 
bountiful  and  so  beautiful.  Immediately,  men,  women,  and  children  rushed  to  the  root  of 
the  vine,  and  about  half  the  people  had  climbed  up  in  safety,  when  the  weight  of  a  woman 
of  unusual  corpulence  broke  the  tough  root  from  the  stem,  and  the  light  of  the  sun  was 
shut  out  forever  from  those  who  were  left  behind.  Nevertheless,  the  Mandans  believed  that 
when  they  died  the  good  among  them  would  return  across  the  lake  to  this  subterranean  vil 
lage,  and  rejoin  their  kindred  ;  but  that  the  wicked  would  never  reach  that  ancient  home, 
for  the  heavy  burdens  of  their  sins  would  sink  them  beneath  the  waters  of  the  lake.  The 
tradition  is  essentially  Indian  in  character. 


74 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES   WESTWARD.       [CHAP.  IV. 


Welsh  Coracle. 


he  saw  in  Washington,  was  of  a  lighter  shade  of  complexion  than 
other  red  men,  and  that  he  was  the  only  full-blooded  Indian  he  had 
ever  seen  with  blue  eyes.  But  he  nevertheless  rejects  the  suppo 
sition  that  they  are  descendants  from  the  Welsh,  and  speaking  their 
tongue,  "  a  fable  "  he  considers  set  at  rest  by  a  knowledge  of  the 
Indian  dialects.  Certainly  it  is  not  pretended  that  any  Indian  tribe 
living  within  the  memory  of  man  has  used  the  old  British  tongue,  as 
was  asserted  to  be  the  fact  by  the  witnesses  of  a  century  and  two 
centuries  ago.  The  slight  resemblances  in  certain  Mandan  words  to 

Welsh,  which  Mr.  Cat- 
lin  found,  but  which 
had  no  weight  with 
Mr.  Gallatin,  are  not 
enough  to  have  en 
abled  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Jones  to  converse  fa 
miliarly  with  the 
Doegs,  or  preach  to 
them  three  times  a 
week  for  four  months 
in  their  own  tongue 
and  his. 

The  supposition  that  the  Mound  Builders  and  the  Welsh  were  iden 
tical,  is  equally  untenable.  Some  of  the  works  of  the  former 
identify  are  known,  by  the  trees  growing  upon  them,  to  have  been 
the  Mound  erected  before  the  date  of  Madoc's  leaving  Wales  ;  and  a 
colony  of  a  few  hundred  persons  could  not  have  so  increased 
and  multiplied  to  the  number  of  the  millions  who  must  have  been 
engaged  in  the  erection  of  the  Mound  Builders'  works,  and  have  ut 
terly  perished  and  disappeared  again  within  a  period  of  four  hundred 
years.1  The  Welsh  tradition  of  Madoc's  adventure  may  nevertheless 
be  true,  notwithstanding  a  failure  to  sustain  it  by  evidence  of  its 
subsequent  existence  within  the  present  limits  of  the  United  States. 
Such  a  colony  may  have  been  founded,  and  have  perished  as  other 
colonies  have  done  since ;  or  a  mere  remnant  of  it  may  have  survived 
to  be  absorbed  by  some  tribe  of  Indians,  on  which  it  stamped  in  lan 
guage  and  in  look  some  feeble  impression  of  its  own  origin.  But  the 
story  must  rest  upon  whatever  intrinsic  probability  of  truth  it  pos- 

1  The  Mandan  tribe  contained  about  two  thousand  persons.  As  a  tribe  it  was  completely 
extinguished  by  the  small-pox,  in  1838,  the  few  whom  the  pestilence  spared  being  made 
captives  of  by  the  Ricarees,  who  took  possession  of  their  village.  This  the  Sioux  soon 
after  attacked,  and,  in  the  thick  of  the  fight  the  unhappy  Mandans  rushed  out  beyond  the 
pickets  and  called  upon  the  Sioux  to  kill  them,  for  "  they  were  Ricaree  dogs,  their  friends 
were  all  dead,  and  they  did  not  wish  to  live."  They  fell  upon  the  besiegers  at  the  same 
time  with  such  impetuosity,  that  they  were  to  a  man  destroyed. — Catlin's  North  American 
Indians,  vol.  ii ,  Appendix  A. 


SUPPOSED   TRACES   OF   THE   WELSH. 


75 


sesses,  rather  than  upon  any  evidence  that  a  people  whose  color  in 
clined  to  white,  and  whose  tongue  was  Old  British,  can  be  traced 
on  this  continent  from  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century  to  our  own  time. 
Should  the  original  sources  of  the  narra 
tive,  the  registers  of  the  Welsh  bards,  be 
ever  recovered,  or  should  other  manu 
scripts  be  found  touching  this  subject,  in 
the  diligent  search  of  later  years  for  fresh 
knowledge  on  these  old  voyages  of  dis 
covery,  there  may  be  some  further  light 
let  in  upon  this  of  the  Welsh  prince.  If 
his  course  was  westward,  leaving  Ireland 
to  the  north,  it  may  be  that  he  and  his 
people  settled,  not  in  Florida,  but  in 
one  of  the  Azores  or  of  the  West  India 

Islands  ^  Mandan  Indian. 

It  is  a  superficial  objection  to  the  truth  of  any  narrative,  that  no 
mention  is  made  of  the  event  it  relates  by  any  contemporaneous 
writer.  It  is,  nevertheless,  true  that  an  event  which  when  it  happened 
was  not  worth  a  newspaper  paragraph,  or,  if  there  were  R  . 
no  newspapers,  wanted  the  vitality  to  get  itself  repeated,  values  of 
may,  a  century  or  two  afterward,  from  its  consequences  or  facts- 
its  relations,  be  of  intense  interest,  and  of  the  highest  importance. 
That  the  ancient  annalist,  —  who  did  not  believe  that  the  author  of 
History  should  ever  condescend  to  anything  that  was  not  an  affair  of 
state,  —  should  have  no  ear  for  the  adventures  of  a  petty  Welsh 
prince,  of  some  gallant  private  gentleman,  or  of  some  rough  master- 
mariner,  can  hardly  excite  surprise,  however  much  it  may  be  regretted 
that  treaties  and  protocols,  and  the  enactment  of  laws  were  not  for 
gotten  for  a  moment,  and  the  details  of  incidents  so  interesting  in 
quired  into  and  recorded.  There  is  to  be  considered  always,  not  only 
the  old  historians'  lofty  notion  of  the  dignity  of  history,  but  that  the 
circumstances  of  time  and  place  may  not  have  been  favorable  to  the 

1  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  this  story  of  the  Welsh  should  have  recently  appeared  in  a  new 
form  still  further  west.  Among  the  Zuni  of  New  Mexico,  there  are  said  to  be  white  Indians 
with  fair  complexions,  Hue  eyes,  and  light  hair.  Among  the  New  Mexicans  is  a  tradition 
that  long  ago  some  Welsh  miners  wandered  into  that  country  with  their  wives  and  chil 
dren,  and  that  the  Zuni  killed  the  men  and  married  the  women.  The  Zuni  deny  the  truth 
of  the  tradition  ;  but  there  is,  nevertheless,  a  remarkable  resemblance  between  some  of  the 
words  of  the  Zuni  language  and  the  English.  Thus,  "Eat-a,"  is  to  eat;  " Eat-on-o-way," 
is  eaten  enough  ;  and  the  Zunians,  to  express  admiration,  exclaim,  "  Look  ye !  "  or  "  Look  ye 
here !  "  The  surveyors  of  a  route  for  a  railroad  from  the  Mississippi  River  to  the  Pacific 
coast,  in  whose  Report  (vol.  iii.,  part  1,  p.  63),  we  find  this  statement,  "did  not  see  those 
white  Indians  at  the  time  of  their  visit,  as  the  small-pox  was  raging  among  the  Zuni,  nor 
did  they  give  much  heed  to  the  tradition  of  the  New  Mexicans." 


76  PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES   WESTWARD.       [CHAP.  IV. 

rapid  transmission  of  intelligence,  and  that  the  intelligence  itself  may 
not  have  been  supposed  to  be  worthy  of  transmission.  And  especially 
where  a  question  of  American  discovery  is  concerned,  another  im 
portant  fact  must  have  its  due  weight,  —  that  it  was  not  till  long  after 
the  death  of  Columbus  that  any  historian  thought  it  worth  while  to 
inquire  into  the  truth  of  any  report  of  a  pre-Columbian  voyage,  or 
even  that  there  were  any  such  reports  to  inquire  into.  If,  then,  we 
are  in  earnest  search  after  the  truth,  we  shall  first  seek  to  know  if,  in 
regard  to  any  alleged  voyage,  there  is  any  contemporaneous  record  or 
clear  tradition  of  it ;  and  failing  these,  if  the  report  be  above  all  sus 
picion  of  having  been  invented,  exaggerated,  or  perverted,  that  it 
might  aid  in  robbing  one  of  the  greatest  and  most  unfortunate  of  men 
of  the  immortal  fame  which  he  hoped  might  at  length  rest  upon  his 
name,  —  a  hope  which  was  almost  the  sole  compensation  and  consola 
tion  for  a  life  of  many  sorrows. 

The  story  of  the  brothers  Zeni,  resting  upon  no  tradition,  and  upon 
no  contemporary  testimony,  is  open  to  all  these  considerations.  The 
The  zeni  Zeni  were  a  noble  and  distinguished  family  of  Venice  ;  in 
family.  uer  wars  with  her  ..neighbors,  these  brothers,  and  others  of 
their  kindred,  had  won  renown,  and  were  thought  worthy  of  a  place 
in  history  for  their  deeds  of  valor  and  their  services  to  the  state.  But 
no  contemporaneous  historian  had  seen  fit  to  relate  other  achievements 
of  theirs,  which,  apart  from  the  special  importance  afterward  attached 
to  them,  were  full  of  romantic  interest ;  no  Skald,  or  Saga-man  of  the 
North,  had  even  mentioned  that  island  of  their  Northern  seas,  where 
these  achievements  were  said  to  have  been  performed.  One  hundred 
and  seventy-eight  years  later,  in  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
when  nations  were  approaching  that  great  power  and  opulence  which 
their  discoveries  and  possessions  in  the  New  World  had  given  them  ; 
when  national  jealousies  as  well  as  national  interests  were  aroused 
for  the  honor  of  having  originated,  or  of  sharing  in  the  most  marvel 
lous  accomplishment  of  human  genius  the  world  had  ever  seen,  then  it 
was  that  a  claim  was  put  forth,  unheard  of  before,  that  these  Venetian 
brothers,  by  more  than  a  century,  preceded  Columbus,  and  that  his 
laurels  must  be  shared  with  them. 

In    1558,  Francisco  Marcolini,  of  Venice,  published  a  volume   of 

letters,  arranged  and  edited  by  Nicolo  Zeno,  purporting  to  be  those 

of  his  ancestors,  Nicolo  and  Antonio  Zeno,  written  between  the  years 

1380    and  1404.     The  letters   and  a  map  had  remained  in  the  family 

archives,  apparently   unnoticed    and    unknown,   till   coining 

Publication      .  J  .  '  to 

of  the  zeni     mto  the  possession  of  this  Nicolo  the  younger  in  his  child- 

letters 

hood,    as   playthings,    he   had   torn    them    into   fragments. 
When  he  came  at  an  age  to  understand  their  value,  he  put  together 


NARRATIVE  OF  THE  BROTHERS  ZENI. 


77 


such  of  these  torn  and  scattered  fragments  as  he  could  recover,  and 
gave  them  to  the  world.  The  little  volume  was  afterward  included 
in  Ramusio's  "  History  of  Early  Voyages," —but  not  till  after  Ram- 
usio's  death,  —  and  was  subsequently  translated  and  transferred  by 
Hakluyt  to  his  own  works.  From  that  day  to  this  it  has  been,  and  is 
still,  a  controverted  question  whether  the  story  is  true  or  false.  By 


Their  story. 


Shipwreck  of  Nicolo  Zeno. 

some  writers  it  is  denounced  as  a  fraud,  easily  compiled  from  infor 
mation  not  difficult  to  be  got  from  various  sources  in  the  middle  of  the 
sixteenth  century ;  by  others  it  is  accepted  on  internal  evidence,  and 
especially  on  the  testimony  of  the  restored  map,  as  worthy  of  belief.1 
In  the  year  1380,  according  to  the  Nicolo  Zeno  of  1558,  his  ances 
tor  of  the  same  name,  who  was  wealthy,  brave,  eager  to  see  the  world, 
and  who  found  at  home  no  occupation  suited  to  his  active  and  daring 
disposition,  fitted  out  a  ship  at  his  own  charges,  and  sailed 
away  northward  for  England  and  Flanders  in  search  of 
adventures.  Nor  did  he  seek  long,  for  a  storm  overtook  him,  drove 
his  ship  out  of  her  course,  casting  her,  at  length,  on  an  unknown  and 
inhospitable  coast.  He  and  his  crew  escaped  with  their  lives  the  perils 
of  the  shipwreck  only  to  run  a  new  risk,  —  as  they  were  thrown  help 
less  and  exhausted  on  the  shore,  —  in  an  attack  from  the  natives.  But 
from  this  they  were  saved  by  the  appearance,  at  the  critical  moment, 
of  the  king  of  the  neighboring  island  of  Porland  at  the  head  of  an 
army,  who  rescued  the  strangers  from  the  hands  of  the  people.  Ad 
dressing  them  in  Latin,  and  learning  that  they  were  Venetians,  he  not 

1  The  latest  essay  on  the  subject,  and  in  favor  of  the  Zeni  Narrative,  is  by  R.  H.  Major, 
published  by  the  Hakluyt  Society  of  London.  His  argument,  however,  is,  for  the  most  part, 
An  elaboration  of  that  of  Reiuholdt  Forster  in  his  Northern  Voyages. 


78  PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES  WESTWARD.        [CHAP.  IV. 

only  gave  them  a  hearty  welcome,  but  begged  them  to  remain  in  his 
service.  To  this  they  consented,  and  served  him  so  well  by  their 
courage  and  their  skill  in  seamanship  that  Nicolo  Zeno  was  made  a 
knight  and  the  captain  of  the  king's  navy.  Then  Nicolo  sent  to 
Venice  for  his  brother  Antonio,  who  soon  joined  him  to  share  in  his 
prosperity,  leaving  behind,  at  home,  the  third  brother,  Carlo,  to  whom 
all  the  subsequent  letters  were  written.  The  name  of  the  king  whom 
the  two  Venetians  followed,  and  who  had  saved  their  lives,  was 
Zichmni,  and  the  country  was  called  the  island  of  Frisland.  This 
island  he  had,  not  long  before  Nicole's  shipwreck,  wrested,  or  was 
about  to  wrest  by  conquest  from  the  king  of  Norway. 

It  is  a  notable  fact  that  this  island  of  Frisland,  which  was  said  to 
be  larger  than  Iceland,  and  which  carried  on  a  brisk  trade  in  fish  and 
other  merchandise  with  "  Britain,  England,  Scotland,  Flanders,  Norway, 
and  Denmark,"  and  between  which  and  Venice  there  seems  to  have 
been  not  infrequent  communication,  should  never  have  been  mentioned 
anywhere  but  about  the  time  of  these  letters  of  the  brothers  Zeni,  and 
that  it  certainly  has  had  no  existence  for  some  hundreds  of  years.1  And 
not  only  Frisland  ;  there  were  various  other  islands  in  those  northern 
seas  held  by  this  Zichmni,  "  a  prince,"  says  Antonio  Zeno,  in  one  of 
his  letters,  "  as  worthy  of  immortal  memory  as  any  that  ever  lived  for 
his  great  valiance  and  singular  humanitie."  By  those  who  accept  the 
account  as  true,  some  suppose  that  Frisland  must  have  been  one  of  the 
Faroe  Islands,  and  that  among  the  Hebrides,  the  Shetland,  and  the 
Orkney  Islands  may  be  found  the  rest  of  the  dominion  subdued  by 
the  prowess  of  this  great  prince  ;  but  others  suppose  that  Frisland  and 
the  rest  were  long  ago  swallowed  up  by  the  sea  in  some  mighty  cata 
clysm,  which  is  the  reason  why  they  have  been  so  difficult  to  find.2 

With  Zichmni  the  Zeni  remained,  —  Nicolo  four  years,  till  he  died, 
and  Antonio  ten  years  longer.  So  long  as  Nicolo  lived  he  did  the 
king  good  service  in  aiding  in  the  subjection  of  a  number  of  the  islands 
of  an  Icelandic  archipelago.  But  he  also  sailed  as  far  westward  as 
Engroneland,  which  is  supposed  to  mean  Greenland.  He  gives  a  mi 
nute  and  interesting  account  of  a  monastery  of  friars  of  the  order  of 

the  Preachers,  and  of  a  church  dedicated  to  St.  Thomas, 
in  Engrone-  which  he  found  in  that  distant  country.  These  friars  lived 

in  that  severe  climate  with  a  remarkable  degree  of  comfort, 
and  even  of  luxury.  Their  monastery  was  built  near  a  hill  from 
which  gushed  forth  a  perennial  fountain  of  hot  water ;  this  they 

1  The  name  was  sometimes  applied  to  Iceland;   but  the  Zeni  letters  speak  of  it  as  an  isl 
and  distinct  from  Iceland. 

2  See  Frobisher's  Voyages,  Hakluyt,  vol.  ii. ;  Forster's  Northern  Voyages  ;  Belknap's  History, 
vol.  ii. ;  Captain  C.  C.  Zahrtman  in  Journal  of  the  Royal   Geographical  Society,  vol.  v. ;  and 
particularly  the  Voyar/e  of  the  Venetian  Brothers,  Nicolo  and  Antonio  Zeno  to  the  Northern  Seat 
in  the  14th  Centitry,  translated  and  edited  by  R.  H.  Major,  Hakluyt  Society  publications,  1873, 


NARRATIVE   OF   THE   BROTHERS   ZENI. 


79 


Greenland  Geyser. 


turned  to  many  useful  purposes  by  conveying  it  in  pipes  into  the 
church  and  monastery,  warming  their 
cells,  cooking  their  food,  heating  their 
covered  winter  gardens,  cultivating  the 
fruits  and  flowers  of  more  temperate 
zones,  putting  it  to  all  uses  for  which 
heat  is  requisite  as  a  substitute  for  fire. 
Thus  they  so  modified  the  rigor  of 
that  hyperborean  region  with  little 
or  no  labor  or  trouble  to  themselves, 
that  those  jolly  monks  made  their 
homes  as  cheerful  as  if  they  were  be 
neath  the  sunny  sky  of  Italy.  Even 
for  the  buildings  of  the  monastery  this 
volcanic  mountain  furnished  them  with 
ample  material  ;  for  on  the  stones 
which  were  cast  out  of  its  crater  they 
had  only  to  throw  water  when  "  burning  hot "  to  reduce  them  to 
excellent  lime,  which  on  being  used  so  hardened  as  to  last  forever.1 

i  A  German  writer,  Dethmar  Blefkins,  a  minister  sent  to  Iceland  from  Hamburg  in  1 563, 
tells  much  the  same  story,  which  he  learned  from  a  monk  who  entered  this  monastery  of  St. 
Thomas  in  1546.  Blefkins,  whose  tract  is  in  Purchas,  vol.  iii.,  says:  "This  Monke  told 
us  marvellous  strange  things,  that  there  was  in  the  Monastery  of  St.  Thomas  (where  he 
lived)  a  Fountaine,  which  sent  forth  burning  and  flaming  water,  that  this  water  was  con 
veyed  through  Pipes  of  stone,  to  the  several  Gels  of  the  Monks,  and  that  it  made  them 
warme  as  stoves  do  with  us,  and  all  kinds  of  meats  might  be  boyled  in  this  Fountaine,  and 
fiery  water,  and  no  otherwise  than  if  it  had  bin  on  a  fire  indeed,  he  advertised  moreover, 
that  the  walls  of  the  Monastery  were  made  with  Pumice  stones,  out  of  a  certain  mountain 
not  farre  from  the  Monastery  :  like  to  Hecla  in  Iceland,  for  if  you  powre  this  water  upon 
the  Pumice  stone,  there  will  follow  a  slymie  matter,  which  instead  of  lyme  they  use  for 
mortar." 

Crantz,  in  his  History  of  Greenland  (p.  265  et  seq.),  in  treating  of  "  lost  "  Greenland,  refers 
to  this  statement  of  the  monk  as  related  by  Blefkin,  but  says  "  it  is  confessed  that  the  story 
is  told  a  little  incoherently,  and  its  truth  is  much  doubted."  "  But  yet,"  he  adds,  "  I  find  a 
sort  of  voucher  for  it  in  Ccesar  Longinus's  Extracts  of  all  Journies  and  Voyages."  There,  it 
is  said  that  an  English  sailor,  Jacob  (or  James)  Hall,  in  the  service  of  Denmark,  made  sev 
eral  voyages  to  Iceland  and  Greenland  and  wrote  a  description  of  the  wild  Greenlanders, 
the  most  particular,  ample,  and  conformable  to  truth  of  all  that  had  written :  this  man 
affirms  that  he  also  had  spoken  with  the  aforesaid  monk  in  Iceland  in  the  presence  of  the 
Governor,  and  had  inquired  of  him  about  the  state  of  Greenland.  He  told  him,  likewise, 
several  things  about  St.  Thomas's  cloyster,  particularly  "  that  there  was  a  fountain  of  hot 
water  conveyed  by  pipes  into  all  their  apartments,  so  that  not  only  their  sitting-rooms,  but 
also  their  sleeping-chambers  were  warmed  by  it,  and  that  in  this  same  water  meat  might  be 
boiled  as  soon  as  in  a  pot  over  the  fire.  The  walls  of  the  cloyster  were  all  made  of  pumace- 
stone,  and  if  they  poured  this  hot  water  upon  the  stones,  they  would  become  clammy  and 
viscid,  and  so  they  used  them  instead  of  lime."  The  Danish  Chronicle  of  Greenland  [con 
tinues  Crantz]  also  makes  mention  of  this  cloyster,  and  speaks  besides  of  a  garden  through 
which  a  rivulet  of  this  hot  fountain  flowed,  and  made  the  soil  so  fruitful  that  it  produced 
the  most  beautiful  flowers  and  fruits. 

Thus  this  monk  of  the  German  author,  Blefken,  and  the  English  sailor,  Hall,  told  in  1546 


80  PRE-COLUMBIAN    VOYAGES   WESTWARD.        [CHAP.  IV. 

But  discoveries  more  interesting  still  were  yet  to  be  made.  Nicolo 
died  soon  after  his  return  from  Engroneland,  and  Antonio  proposed 
to  return  to  Venice,  but  was  not  permitted  to  do  so  by  Zichmni,  who 
retained  him  for  further  service.  There  had  arrived  at  Frisland  an 
ancient  fisherman,  who  had  been  absent  many  years  in 
of  a  fisher-  strange  lands,  and  the  tale  he  told  was  one  which  might  well 
arouse  so  bold  a  navigator  and  adventurous  a  Viking  as 
Zichmni.  Six  and  twenty  years  before,  he  said,  four  fisher-boats  from 
Frisland  were  driven  by  a  mighty  tempest  a  thousand  miles  to  the 
westward,  when  one  of  them  was  wrecked  upon  an  island  called  Esto- 
tiland  —  supposed  to  be  Newfoundland  —  and  taken  prisoners  by  the 
inhabitants.  They  were  led  to  "  a  faire  and  populous  city  "  and 
brought  before  the  king,  who,  learning  who  and  what  they  were, 
through  an  interpreter  —  also  a  shipwrecked  sailor  —  who  spoke  Latin, 
determined  they  should  be  retained  in  his  service.  Five  years  they 
lived  there  and  found  it  to  be  a  rich  country,  "  with  all  the  com 
modities  of  the  world,"  with  mines  of  all  manner  of  metals,  and 
especially  abounding  in  gold.  In  the  middle  of  it  was  a  high  moun 
tain  from  which  sprung  four  great  rivers  that  went  forth  and 
watered  all  the  land.  The  inhabitants  they  found  to  be  a 
"  witty  people,"  having  "  all  the  arts  and  faculties "  of  civilized 
nations,  speaking  a  language  of  their  own,  with  letters  and  characters 
peculiar  to  themselves.  Yet  they  had  intercourse  with  other  countries, 
for  in  the  king's  library  there  were  Latin  books  which,  however,  none 
could  read,  and  they  imported  merchandise  of  various  kinds  from 
Engroneland.  Southward  of  this  kingdom  was  another  great  and 
populous  country,  very  rich  in  gold,  where  there  were  many  cities  and 
castles,  and  where  the  people  raised  corn  and  brewed  ale.  They  were 
also  a  maritime  people,  though  they  did  not  understand  the  use  of 
the  compass ;  but  seeing  this  wonderful  instrument  in  the  hands  of 
the  fishermen,  and  discerning  its  great  utility  at  sea,  they  held  these 
strangers  in  such  esteem  that  they  fitted  out  twelve  barks  and  sent 
them  southward,  under  their  direction,  to  that  other  land  called 
Drogeo. 

precisely  the  same  story,  in  almost  identical  language,  of  the  Monastery  and  Church  of  St. 
Thomas,  in  Greenland,  and  the  ingenious  hot-water  works,  supplied  from  a  geyser,  which 
was  told  by  Nicolo  Zeno  nearly  two  hundred  years  before.  The  monk  could  not  have  bor 
rowed  from  the  Venetian  book,  for  that  was  not  published  till  twelve  years  after  he  is  saic. 
to  have  entered  the  Monastery  of  St.  Thomas,  in  Greenland,  where  he  saw  this  remarkable 
oasis  in  the  arctic  wilderness,  but  which  nobody  but  he  and  Nicolo  Zeno  had  ever  thought 
worthy  of  description.  If,  therefore,  Blefken  and  Caesar  Longinus  may  be  relied  upon, 
and  there  really  was  such  a  monk,  telling  such  a  story,  about  the  time  of  the  publication  of 
the  Zeni  letters,  it  shows,  at  least,  that  other  sources  of  information  in  regard  to  Greenland, 
were  open  to  Nicolo  Zeno  the  younger,  than  the  mutilated  fragments  of  his  ancestor's  letters. 


NARRATIVE  OF  THE  BROTHERS  ZENI.         81 

It  was  an  unhappy  expedition  ;  for  though  the  fishermen  escaped 
death  at  sea  in  their  storm -tossed  vessels,  they  met  on  land  a  fate 
more  cruel.  Helpless  and  exhausted,  they  were  made  prisoners  as 
they  were  thrown  upon  the  shore,  and  most  of  them  were  immedi 
ately  eaten  by  the  savage  people  "  which  feed  upon  man's  flesh  as  the 
sweetest  meat  in  their  judgment,  as  is."  But  the  man  who  had  got 
back  to  Frisland,  and  some  of  his  companions,  were  saved ;  for  however 
excellent  they  might  be  for  eating,  they  were  held  as  better  still  for 
slaves.  He  taught  these  people  the  art  of  taking  fish  with  nets,  and  so 
grew  presently  into  great  favor  ;  so  great,  indeed,  that  powerful  chiefs 
quarrelled  for  the  possession  of  his  person,  and  went  to  war  about  him, 
so  that  he  was  the  royal  fisher  in  turn  to  no  less  than  twenty-five  of 
these  copper-colored  lords.  For  thirteen  years  he  lived  among  them 
and  thus  saw  many  parts  of  the  country.  It  was,  he  said, 
a  very  great  country,  as  it  were  a  new  world ;  "  but  the 
people  were  very  rude,  very  fierce  and  cruel,  and  voide  of  all  good 
ness;"  so  savage  that  they  all  went  naked  ;  so  wanting  in  intelligence 
that  they  had  not  even  the  wit  to  cover  themselves  with  the  skins  of 
the  beasts  they  killed  with  their  wooden  spears  and  arrows,  though 
they  suffered  from  the  cold.  Yet  they  had  laws  peculiar  to  each  tribe, 
and  one  custom  that  was  universal,  —  that  they  should  kill  all  they 
could  in  constant  wars,  and  eat  all  they  killed.  It  is  not  an  attractive 
picture,  but  is  thought  by  those  who  maintain  the  Zeni  letters  to  be 
authentic,  to  answer  accurately  to  the  character  of  the  Indians  after 
ward  found  within  the  present  limits  of  the  United  States. 

But  farther  to  the  southwest  the  fisherman  found  a  people  of  more 
"  civility,"  as  he  found  a  more  temperate  climate,  where  they  had 
cities  and  temples  for  their  idols.  To  these  idols  they  sacrificed  men 
whom  they  afterward  ate.  They  understood  the  use  of  gold  and 
silver,  whereas  the  more  northern  people  knew  nothing  of  metals. 
This,  it  is  assumed,  is  a  description  of  Mexico  and  her  semi-civiliza 
tion,  thus  giving  to  the  fisherman  a  wide  field  of  observation,  who 
must  have  travelled,  granting  the  truth  of  the  narrative,  down  the 
Atlantic  coast,  along  the  whole  of  the  northern,  and  part  of  the  west 
ern  coast  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  The  discovery,  if  discovery  it  was, 
was  more  extensive  than  that  of  Columbus  himself,  and  of  other  navi 
gators,  in  the  next  two  centuries  ;  and  the  marvel  is,  that  there  should 
be  no  record  or  tradition  of  an  event  so  interesting  as  this  finding 
"  as  it  were  of  a  new  world,"  except  in  these  forgotten  letters  to  Carlo 
Zeno,  of  Venice,  and  that  such  letters  should  have  been  unknown  for 
nearly  two  hundred  years. 

For  the  fisherman,  after  his  twenty-six  years  absence  and  travel  in 
these  strange  lands  and  among  these  barbarous  people,  returned  to 


32 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES   WESTWARD.        [CHAP.  IV. 


Frisland,  where  his  tale  was  generally  believed  and   even  confirmed 
by   other  mariners  who    also  knew  something;  of   that  far 

Expedition  ,-,  .  . 

of  Prince       country,     ho  intense  was  the  interest  excited  that  the  prince 

Zichmni.  „.    1  ,         -.  . 

Zrichmm  resolved  at  once  to  fit  out  an  expedition,  and  so 
many  came  forward  to  join  it,  that  Antonio  believed  that  it  would  be 


Aztec  City. 

at  no  cost  to  the  state.  Zichmni  commanded  in  person,  setting  forth 
with  many  barks  and  men.  Two  days  before  sailing,  the  fisherman, 
who  was  to  have  piloted  the  fleet,  unfortunately  died,  and  his  place 
had  to  be  supplied  by  other  sailors  who  had  returned  with  him  from 
Estotiland.  Soon  after  leaving  the  last  island  which  owed  Zichmni 
allegiance,  he  encountered  a  gale  which  lasted  for  eight  days  and 
wrecked  most  of  his  vessels.  Nevertheless,  pushing  boldly  westward, 
he  reached,  at  length,  an  island  where  he  found  a  safe  and  com 
modious  harbor,  but  where  "  an  infinite  number  of  people  came  rush 
ing  furiously  to  the  water-side "  and  forbade  a  landing.  Zichmni 
made  signs  of  peace,  when  ten  men  came  off  to  him,  speaking  ten  dis 
tinct  languages,  none  of  which  could  he  understand  except  that  of  one 
from  Iceland.  From  him  the  prince  learned  that  the  island  was  called 
Icaria,  and  the  people  Icari,  after  the  first  king  of  the  place,  who  was 
the  son  of  Daedalus,  a  king  of  Scotland.  This  Deedalus  had  formerly 
conquered  the  island,  and  left  his  son  there  to  reign  in  his  stead, 
while  he,  setting  forth  in  search  of  new  conquests,  was  overwhelmed 
by  a  tempest,  and  the  sea,  in  memory  of  him  who  was  drowned  in 


NARRATIVE   OF   THE   BROTHERS   ZENI.  83 

it,  was  thenceforth  called  the  Icarian  Sea.  The  laws  and  the  land 
which  he  had  given  them  they  valued  far  more  than  life,  and  they 
would  not  tolerate  the  presence  of  strangers.  One  man  only  from  the 
fleet  would  they  permit  to  come  among  them,  and  he  must  speak 
Italian  that  they  might  add  that  to  the  ten  other  tongues  of  their  ten 
interpreters. 

The  prince,  making  a  pretence  of  departing  in  compliance  with  the 
commands  of  the  natives,  circumnavigated  Icaria,  but  a  multitude  of 
armed  men  watched  the  vessels  from  the  hill-tops,  kept  pace  along  the 
beaches  with  its  progress,  and  menaced  it  continually  ;  and  when  a 
second  attempt  was  made  to  go  on  shore,  the  Frislanders  were  re 
pulsed,  many  killed,  and  more  wounded.  Against  this  fierce  obsti 
nacy  Zichmni  was  convinced  at  last  that  it  was  useless  to  contend. 
Once  more  he  set  sail,  still  steering  to  the  west. 

He  steered  to  the  west  for  five  days  with  a  fair  breeze ;  then  the 
weather  changed,  and  the  wind  came  out  from  the  southwest. 
With  this  "  wind  in  the  powpe  "  he  sailed  four  days  more —  iandSedL 
sailed,  that  is,  before  the  wind  for  four  days  to  the  northeast, 
when  once  more  land  loomed  up  above  the  sea-line.  On  what  part  of 
the  American  coast  this  land  may  have  been,  it  is  not  considered 
prudent  even  to  conjecture;  for,  given  a  starting-point,  Frisland, 
which  never  existed ;  a  voyage  thence  westward  of  not  less  than  ten 
days  to  another  fabulous  island,  Icaria ;  thence  still  westward  for  five 
days  more ;  thence  for  four  days  in  a  northeast  direction,  and  the 
imagination  need  submit  to  no  trammels  of  latitude  and  longitude. 
But  wherever  it  was,  it  was  so  pleasant  a  country,  its  days  of  June 
were  so  delicious,  its  soil  was  so  fruitful,  its  rivers  so  fair,  its  fish  and 
its  fowl  in  such  abundance,  that  here  Zichmni  resolved  to  remain,  to 
build  a  city,  to  found  a  state.  The  harbor  where  he  anchored  he 
called  Trin,  and  the  point  which  stretched  out  into  the  sea  and  em 
braced  it,  he  called  Capo  di  Trin.  In  the  centre  of  the  island  was  an 
active  volcano,  visible  from  the  coast,  and  out  of  the  base  of  it  ran  a 
certain  matter  like  pitch,  that  flowed  into  the  sea.  The  country  was 
densely  populated  by  a  people  small  of  stature,  timid,  half  wild,  and 
living  in  caves  of  the  earth.  Zichmni  sent  his  ships  back  to  Frisland, 
under  the  command  of  Antonio  Zeno,  retaining  only  his  boats  and  a 
portion  of  his  people  ;  but  whether  he  himself  ever  returned  thence, 
or  what  was  the  subsequent  fate  of  him  and  his  colony,  except  that  he 
built  his  town  and  explored  much  of  the  neighboring  region,  there  is 
no  account.  The  last  letter  of  Zeno  declares  that  he  has  written  many 
interesting  things  in  a  book,  which  he  should  bring  home  with  him, 
respecting  the  adventures  of  his  brother  and  himself,  of  the  prince 
Zichmni,  the  many  islands  he  reigned  over,  and  the  new  lands  he  dis- 


84 


PRE-COLUMBIAN  VOYAGES   WESTWARD.       [CHAP.  IV. 


covered  ;  but  this  the  younger  Zeno  had  destroyed  in  his  youth,  and 
here,  therefore,  the  narrative  ends. 

The  warmest  defenders  of  this  irreconcilable  story  do  not  venture 
to  deny  that  much  of  it  is  fable,   and  of  that  which  they  accept  as 


THE  NORTH  ATLANTIC  OCEAN  BY  ANTONIO  ZENO  IN  THE  YEAR  1400 


Objections 
to  this 
narrative. 


The  Zeni    Map. 

true,  some  of  its  essential  facts  of  geography  and  navigation  stand  in 
need  of  the  most  ingenious  explanation.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that 
any  actual  navigator  should  have  described  so  many  islands 
that  had  no  existence  in  the  places  where  he  put  them,  both 
in  the  narrative  and  on  a  map  ;  and  quite  as  hard  to  believe 
that  they  have  all  been  since  sunk  in  the  sea,  if  they  ever  had  an 
existence.  If  it  is  assumed  that  the  requisite  number,  and  the  con 
quest  and  discovery  of  those  referred  to,  may  be  found  by  looking  for 
them  among  the  Faroe  Islands,  the  Orkneys,  or  the  Hebrides,  it  is 
hard  to  reconcile  such  a  supposition  to  the  known  facts  of  history  — 
that  Norway,  at  the  end  of  the  14th  century  was  governed  not  by  a 
king,  but  by  a  queen,  Margaret ;  that  the  Orkneys  and  Shetland 
isles  were  never  wrested  from  that  crown,  but  belonged  to  it  till  late 
in  the  15th  century  ;  that  Henry  Sinclair.  Earl  of  Orkney,  held  pos 
session  of  the  islands  of  that  name  as  a  loyal  subject  of  Norway  at 
the  very  time  that  Zichmni  is  said  to  have  conquered  Frisland ;  that 
the  Hebrides  have  been  in  continual  possession  of  Scotland  since  the 
latter  part  of  the  13th  century.  While  it  is  exceedingly  difficult  to 


CHINESE   DISCOVERY.  85 

adjust  the  main  statements  of  the  narrative  to  any  reasonable  theory 
consistent  with  their  truth,  the  meagre  information  it  gives  in  regard 
to  the  Western  Continent  was  possibly  accessible  from  various  sources 
when  the  letters  were  published.  The  most  rational  conclusion,  there 
fore,  seems  to  be  that  if  the  story  were  not  a  clumsy  attempt  to  patch 
up  an  account  of  a  voyage,  some  record  of  which  had  been  preserved 
in  mutilated  and  unintelligible  fragments  of  old  letters,  then  it  was  a 
bold,  but  still  clumsy,  fabrication,  whereby  it  was  hoped  that  the  glory 
of  the  great  discovery  might  be  snatched  from  Spain  and  Columbus. 
In  nothing,  in  either  case,  is  that  clumsiness  so  apparent  as  in  the 
adaptation  of  the  Grecian  names  and  fables  of  Dsedalus  and  Icarus  to 
persons  and  places  in  the  frozen  North. 

There  is  a  still  older  claim  to  the  discovery  of  the  western  hemis 
phere  than  can  be  made  either  for  Northmen,  Arabs,  Welsh,  or  Vene 
tians.  In  the  Chinese  Year-Books,  in  which  are  recorded  , 

,  .  Chinese 

from  year  to  year  tor  many  centuries,  every  event  of  interest  claim  to 

,  -i     •          i  •  American 

that  occurred  m  the  empire,  is  the  relation  of  a  Buddhist  Discovery. 
priest  named  Hoei-Shin,  who,  in  the  last  year  of  the  fifth  century, 
visited  a  country  fifteen  thousand  U  east  of  Tahan.  Precisely  the 
distance  measured  by  twenty  thousand  U  in  the  year  499,  and  whether 
by  Tahan  was  meant  Kamtschatka,  Alaska,  or  Siberia,  are  questions 
about  which  there  is  a  good  deal  of  doubt,  while  on  a  clear  under 
standing  of  them  depends  any  application  of  the  narrative  to  Amer 
ican  discovery. 

The  country  which  the  priest  reached,  however,  he  called  Fusang, 
from  its  most  remarkable  product,  a  tree  possessed  of  many  valuable 
qualities.  Its  sprouts  were  like  those  of  the  bamboo,  and  Degcription 
were  used  for  food ;  it  bore  an  excellent  fruit,  red  in  color,  in  of  Fusans- 
shape  like  a  pear,  and  which  would  keep  the  whole  year  round ;  its 
bark  was  fibrous,  and  from  it  the  natives  made  a  kind  of  linen  for 
their  clothing,  and  the  paper  on  which  they  wrote ;  for  they  were  so 
cultured  a  people  that  they  used  written  characters.  Another  fruit 
they  had  was  apples  ;  from  a  kind  of  reed  they  made  mats.  As 
beasts  of  burden  they  used  horses,  oxen,  and  stags ;  these  were  har 
nessed  to  wagons.  The  hinds  were  kept  also  for  their  milk,  from 
which  cheese  was  made ;  and  the  oxen  had  horns  so  large  that  they 
would  hold  ten  bushels,  and  were  useful  as  receptacles  of  household 
goods.  Iron  they  had  not ;  but  copper,  gold,  and  silver  were  plentiful, 
though  but  little  valued. 

Fusang  was  governed  by  a  king,  who  when  he  appeared  in  public 
was  heralded  by  the  music  of  horns  and  trumpets  ;  he  clothed  himself 
apparently  in  accordance  with  some  astronomical  theory,  as  the  color 
of  his  garments  was  changed  every  two  years  for  a  cycle  of  ten  years, 


86 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES  WESTWARD.       [CHAP.  IV. 


when  the  same  order  was  begun  again.  The  title  of  this  king  was 
Ichi,  and  he  was  surrounded  by  a  nobility  divided  into  three  ranks. 
The  people  were  peaceful  and  had  no  weapons  of  war.  Offences 
against  the  law  were  punished  by  imprisonment ;  when  this  was  for 
life,  the  offenders  were  allowed  to  marry,  but  their  children  were  sold 
as  slaves. 

A  thousand  li  east  of  Fusang,  the  monk  said,  the  people  were 
white,  were  covered  with  hair,  and  were  all  women.  When  they 

wished  to  become  mothers 
they  had  only  to  bathe  in 
a  certain  river.  Their  chil 
dren  they  nourished,  not 
from  the  breast  but  from 
a  tuft  of  hair  upon  the 
shoulder.  Other  wonderful 
things  he  related,  but  these 
the  learned  translator,  the 
late  Professor  Neumann  of 
the  University  of  Munich, 
thought  too  absurd  to  re 
peat.  The  old  Chinese 
poets  found  a  potent  stimu- 

Chinese  Junk.  ,  ,  . 

lant  to  their  imaginations 

in  these  stories  of  Hoei-Shin,  and  made  of  Fusang  a  delightful  region 
of  many  marvels  where  the  mulberry  trees  were  thousands  of  feet  in 
height,  and  the  silk- worms  more  than  six  feet  in  length.  In  a  land 
blessed  with  such  capabilities  for  making  silk,  a  Chinaman  could  con 
ceive  of  nothing  wanting. 

Not  the  least  remarkable  of  the  observations  of  Hoei-Shin  is  that 
the  people  of  this  distant  land  were  all  Buddhists.  For  he  was  not 
the  first  discoverer  ;  twenty-nine  years  before  his  visit,  he  said,  five 
beggar-monks  from  China  had  reached  Fusang  and  introduced  the 
religion  of  Buddha,  with  his  holy  books  and  images,  instructed  the 
people  in  the  principles  of  monastic  life,  and  thus  wrought  a  great 
change  in  those  few  years  in  their  belief  and  their  manner  of  living. 

This  alleged  discovery  has  been  the  subject  of  a  good  deal  of  con 
troversy.  There  is  nothing  incredible  in  the  supposition  that  the 
Chinese  may  have  sailed  across  the  Pacific  long  before  Europeans 
ventured  over  the  Atlantic  Ocean  ;  for  they  were  early  navigators ; 
knew  in  the  second  century  of  our  era  the  use  of  the  mariner's  compass  ; 
and  their  junks,  which  have  changed  little  in  form  since  they  were 
first  known  to  Europeans,  have  been  found  wrecked  upon  the  west 
coast  of  America,  at  different  periods,  from  the  time  of  the  first  Span 
ish  voyages  in  the  Pacific. 


CHINESE   DISCOVERY.  87 

While  there  is  no  intrinsic  improbability,  then,  of  such  a  discovery, 
those  who  see  in  Hoei-Shin's  narrative  a  record  of  it,  maintain  that 
Fusang  was  either  California  or  Mexico;  that  the  Fusang-tree  was 
the  great  American  aloe,  or  "  Maguey,"  as  the  Indians  call  it;  that 
the  oxen  with  enormous  horns  were  bison  ;  that  the  stags  were  rein 
deer,  which  may  have  once  been  used  farther  south  than  now ;  that 
the  horses  were  of  a  race  that  afterward  became  extinct,  and  whose 
fossil  remains  have  been  found  by  geologists  in  the  western  territories 
of  the  United  States ;  that  the  ancient  Mexicans  were  accustomed  to 
milk  the  bison-cows  and  hinds,  and  to  manufacture  cheese ;  that 
though  Peru  was  not  Mexico,  from  one  the  people  may  have  gone  to 
the  other ;  and  Ichi  may  have  meant  Inca,  the  title  of  the  sovereign 
of  Peru,  which  may  have  been  brought  from  Mexico  ;  that  orders  of 
nobility  were  known  both  in  Mexico  and  Peru ;  that  the  Mexicans  had 
some  knowledge  of  astronomy,  and  the  cycle  of  ten  years,  the  obser 
vance  of  which  determined  the  Ichi  in  the  color  of  his  garments,  may 
have  been  a  subdivision  of  the  Mexican  astronomical  period  of  fifty-two 
years ;  and  finally,  that  Tahan  was  Alaska,  and  according  to  the  most 
reasonable  computation  of  the  length  of  a  li  of  the  fifth  century,  the 
coast  of  Mexico  is  about  twenty  thousand  li  from  Alaska. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  observed  that  the  monk  speaks  of  no  long 
voyage  to  the  country  he  calls  Fusang  ;  that  in  using  the  vague  term 
20,000  li,  he  meant  to  indicate  a  great  distance  rather  than  any  definite 
measurement  in  miles ;  and  that  he  may  have  referred  to  no  region 
farther  off  than  Kamtschatka,  the  island  of  Saghalien  or  than  Japan ; 
that  by  Tahan  he  may  have  meant  Siberia ;  that  as  his  narrative  is 
acknowledged  to  be  largely  made  up  of  fables,  so  that  which  is  true  is 
composed  of  facts  and  rumors  in  regard  to  various  countries  ;  as,  for 
example,  a  tree  similar  in  its  characteristics  to  those  ascribed  to  the 
Fusang  is  found  in  one  of  the  Aleutian  islands ;  the  reindeer  are  com 
mon  to  Asia  as  well  as  America,  and  other  peoples  beside  the  Mexi 
cans  are  known  to  have  been  ignorant  of  the  use  of  iron  and  to  have 
used  copper  instead. 

If  the  story  of  Hoei-Shin  was  not  meant  to  deceive  —  and  some 
Oriental  scholars  do  not  hesitate  to  call  him  "a  lying  priest,"  —  it  is 
too  indefinite,  until  supported  by  further  evidence,  to  be  accepted  as 
an  authentic  narrative  of  a  veritable  discovery  of  the  Western  conti 
nent.  Its  meagre  statement  of  the  character  and  manners  of  the  peo 
ple  of  Fusang  and  of  the  productions  of  the  country  can  hardly  be 
made  to  apply  to  the  ancient  Mexicans  by  seeking  for  similarities  from 
the  Arctic  regions  to  Peru.1 

1  See  Humboldt's  Examen  Critique,  tome  2,  p.  62,  et  seq.,  and  Fusang,  or  The  Discovery  of 
America  by  Chinese  Buddhist  Priests  in  the  Fifth  Century,  by  Charles  G.  Leland. 


PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES   WESTWARD.      [CHAP.  IV. 

We  have  devoted  these  earlier  chapters  to  periods  which,  in  previous 
histories  of  the  United  States  and  of  America,  have  either  had  no 
place  at  all,  or  have  been  dismissed  in  a  page  or  a  paragraph. 
these  pre-  Should  it  ever  be  possible  to  penetrate  the  mystery  and 
periods  on  darkness  which  shrouded  one  half  the  world  almost  as  com 
pletely  as  if  it  had  been  another  planet,  from  the  time  of 
its  creation  to  a  thousand  years  after  Jesus  Christ,  such  an  addition 
to  human  knowledge  would  be  of  inestimable  value  and  intense  inte 
rest.  Modern  science  has  only  begun  to  read  this  story  of  races  and 
of  civilizations  that  long  since  disappeared,  leaving  no  other  record 
than  those  relics  which  till  recently  have  been  either  overlooked  or 
misunderstood. 

What  point  in  time,  or  what  degree  of  knowledge,  may  be  thus 
reached  by  future  discoveries  and  deductions  from  them  in  a  field  as 
yet  but  little  explored,  it  would  be  rash  to  hazard  even  a  guess.  But 
it  is  well  to  know  what  ground  there  is  for  presuming  that  it  is  possi 
ble  to  learn  anything  of  that  pre-historic  period.  And  still  more  in 
actual  history,  even  though  its  records  be  obscure  and  imperfect,  or 
only  traditions  reduced  to  writing  ;  even  though  the  period  of  which 
we  can  gain  only  such  imperfect  information  be,  in  some  respects, 
legendary  and  romantic,  we  may,  nevertheless,  profitably  and  prop 
erly  go  further  back  than  the  ordinary  starting-point  by  five  hundred 
years. 

Hitherto  the  legitimate  commencement  of  American  history  has 
been  held  to  be  toward  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  and  all 
beyond  fabulous  or  inscrutable.  But  there  were  bold  men  and  skilful 
sailors  before  Columbus.  Ever  since  men  sailed  upon  the  sea,  or 
possessed  a  literature,  there  have  been  glimpses,  sometimes  transient 
or  illusory,  at  other  times  distinct,  of  a  mysterious  world  in  the 
Western  Ocean,  the  subject  of  curious  conjecture,  of  vague  prophecy, 
and  oftener,  perhaps,  than  is  supposed,  of  attempted  discovery. 
Though  there  was  no  permanent  occupation  and  no  positive  recogni 
tion  of  this  as  a  new  quarter  of  the  globe  till  the  Columbian  era,  the 
real  or  supposed  approaches  to  its  possession  for  the  five  hundred  pi-e- 
vious  years  appeal  as  much  to  human  sympathy,  and  are  as  pertinent 
to  human  progress,  as  the  mythical  periods  of  the  historical  nations  of 
the  Old  World. 

From  discoveries  made  without  design  and  in  ignorance  of  their 
real  character,  we  are  led,  in  the  gradual  progress  of  events  and  the 
Va  ue  slow  advance  of  knowledge,  to  that  later  time  when  the 
eari01navi-  °cean  was  traversed  with  a  distinct  and  intelligent  purpose 
gators.  an(j  with  unhesitating  faith.  The  Northmen,  the  Welsh, 
the  Venetians  —  assuming  their  narratives  to  be  wholly  or  partially 


NAUTICAL    AND   GEOGRAPHICAL  KNOWLEDGE.  89 

true  —  while  they  were  certain  that  they  had  sailed  into  unknown 
seas,  and  were  cast  upon  new  lands  and  among  strange  peoples  beyond 
the  accredited  limits  of  the  inhabited  world,  also  believed,  no  doubt, 
that  they  had  only  reached  the  farther  shores  or  the  out-lying  islands 
of  the  continent  whence  they  came.  The  notions  as  to  the  shape  and 
the  extent  of  the  earth  were,  at  that  period,  so  vague,  even  among  the 
learned,  and  the  art  of  navigation  was  so  little  developed,  that  there 
was  not  much  speculation  as  to  the  possibility  of  penetrating  beyond 
the  known  limits  of  the  continents  and  out  of  the  accustomed  tracks 
of  ships.  All  that  mariners  dared  to  do  was  to  creep  along  the  coast 
from  headland  to  headland,  with  a  fair  wind,  to  go  to  places  fre 
quently  visited. 

The  boldest  who  first  ventured  out  of  sight  of  land,  had  only  the 
sun  by  day  and  the  stars  by  night  to  steer  by  ;  when  these  were  ob 
scured  for  more  than  a  day  or  two  they  lost  all  reckoning 
and  were  at  the  mercy  of  the  winds  and  currents.     They  o^nautlcai011 

.  ,1  5  £    t    ,          ••  f         .1        instruments 

were  without  the  mariner  s  compass  or  later  times,  tor  the  and  knowi- 
magnetic  needle  was  not  in  general  use  till  early  in  the  four 
teenth  century,  either  because  a  knowledge  of  its  properties  was  con 
fined  to  a  few,  or  because  there  was  a  timid  hesitation  to  spread  the 
knowledge  of  an  instrument  which,  it  was  supposed,  would  certainly 
be  looked  upon  among  the  ignorant  as  belonging  to  the  Black  Art, 
and  one  with  which  no  sensible  seaman,  who  thought  of  his  salvation, 
would  trust  himself  at  sea.  It  was  impossible  to  ascertain  the  position 
of  a  ship  out  of  sight  of  land,  for  it  was  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century  before  there  was  any  nautical  instrument  by  which  the  alti 
tude  of  the  sun  and  stars  could  be  taken  with  any  approach  to  accu 
racy.  Even  sailing  on  a  wind  is  supposed  to  have  been  unknown  till 
the  Northmen  found  it  possible,  with  the  wind  on  the  quarter,  to  still 
keep  the  ship  on  her  course  if  they  ventured  to  haul  their  tacks 
aboard.  Before  that  time  the  sailor  was  no  wiser  than  the  nautilus, 
which  can  only  sail  with  a  breeze  from  astern.  What  little  knowledge 
there  was  of  distant  parts  of  the  earth  was  gained  by  a  few  travellers 
over  land  in  search  of  information  ;  by  priests  devoted  to  the  propa 
gation  of  the  Christian  faith  among  the  heathen  ;  by  travelling  mer 
chants  of  different  countries,  who,  meeting  each  other  at  certain  great 
marts  for  the  exchange  of  merchandise,  exchanged  information  also  as 
to  the  regions  whence  they  came,  or  others  which  they  had  visited  in 
the  pursuit  of  their  calling. 

Of  the  three  continents,  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  into  which  the  world 
was  then  supposed  to  be  divided,  the  boundaries  were  unknown,  and 
the  extreme  parts,  if  not  uninhabited,  —  at  the  north,  because  of  the 
intensity  of  the  cold ;  in  the  torrid  zone,  because  of  the  intensity  of 


90  PRE-COLUMBIAN   VOYAGES  WESTWARD.       [CHAP.  IV. 

the  heat,  —  were  believed  to  be  either  absolutely  impenetrable  by 
those  born  in  more  temperate  climates,  or  to  be  entered  only  at  the 
risk  of  life.  It  was  death  from  cold  to  go  too  far  northward  ;  to  ven 
ture  too  far  southward  might  be  worse  than  death,  for  if  heat  did 
not  at  once  consume  the  flesh  and  bones  of  the  unhappy  traveller,  it 
would  singe  his  hair  to  a  crispy  wool,  and  tan  his  skin  to  the  black 
ness  of  a  coal. 

But  when,  at  length,  vessels  were  driven  by  the  fury  of  tempests, 
or  drifted  by  irresistible  currents  westward  upon  unknown  coasts, 
though  the  bewildered  crews  may  have  believed  that  they  had  only 
reached  the  farther  confines  of  the  continent  of  Europe,  extending 
northward  to  the  pole,  thence  southward  and  westward  to  some  un 
approachable  boundary,  such  voyages  were,  nevertheless,  the  natural 
consequence  of  that  boldness  which,  little  by  little,  ventured  farther 
out  to  sea,  and  led  at  length  to  such  grand  results.  They  were  the 
pioneers  of  subsequent  discovery,  and  the  traditions,  speculations,  and 
prophecy  scattered  through  ancient  literature,  of  islands  and  conti 
nents  in  and  beyond  the  Sea  of  Darkness,  arose  in  part  at  least  from 
vague  reports  of  ships  having  sometimes  sailed  into  those  mysterious 
waters  and  touched  upon  distant  shores. 

Then  in  the  fifteenth  century  came  the  revival  of  learning  in  Europe. 
Enthusiasm  was  kindled  in  the  study  of  science  ;  especially  was  this 
true  in  regard  to  cosmography.  All  that  the  scholars  of  the  earlier 
Effect  of  aSes  na(^  taught  was  diligently  learned ;  and  the  new  the- 
scTe'ntific*  ories  which  the  student  formed  in  his  closet,  the  adventurous 
learning.  voyager  sought  to  test  by  actual  experiment.  To  the  polit 
ical  jealousy  of  states  was  added  a  nobler  rivalry  in  efforts  to  enlarge 
the  boundaries  of  geographical  knowledge  and  to  augment  the  com 
merce  of  the  world.  Sailing  upon  the  sea  grew  into  an  art ;  it  be 
came  possible  to  ascertain  with  some  precision  the  position  of  a  ship 
out  of  sight  of  land  ;  to  tell  almost  with  absolute  certainty  the  direc 
tion  in  which  she  should  be  steered,  though  blackest  clouds  and  dark 
est  night  obscured  the  sky.  It  is  not  easy  now  to  conceive  how 
immense  an  impulse  this  was  to  the  activity  and  intelligence  of  that 
age  ;  but  it  opened  the  whole  world  to  those  who  could  avail  them 
selves  of  these  means  of  knowledge,  and  was  the  dawn  of  a  new 
era  in  civilization.  New  wants  were  created  ;  luxury  increased,  as 
the  products  of  different  and  distant  countries  became  known ;  a 
demand  arose  which  gave  a  new  importance  and  power  to  commerce 
and  to  expeditions  to  find  out  new  and  shorter  routes  to  those  distant 
lands.1 

And  there  was  no  discovery  which  offered  so  magnificent  a  return, 

1  See  Robertson's  History  of  America,  book  ii. 


EFFECT   OF   REVIVAL   OF   LEARNING.  91 

none  which  was  sought  for  with  so  much  intrepidity  and  eagerness,  as 
a  shorter  way  to  that  marvellous  India,  with  its  fabulous  riches  and 
strange  peoples,  which  such  travellers  as  Marco  Polo  and  Sir  John 
Mandeville  had  visited  and  written  of,  but  which,  as  yet,  could  only 
be  reached  by  adventurous  merchants  through  long  and  perilous  jour 
neys  overland.  The  pursuit  of  this  chimera,  rendered  possible  by  the 
fresh  acquisitions  of  knowledge,  and  the  wants  of  the  age,  was  the 
crowning  event  which  revealed  a  New  World,  whose  existence  had 
been  held  to  be  one  of  the  curious  fables  of  ancient  philosophers. 


The   "  Far  Cathay." 

CHAPTER  V. 

INDIA  —  THE   EL   DORADO    OF   COLUMBUS. 

THE  KINGDOM  OF  CATHAY.  —  EFFORTS  IN  EUROPE  TO  FIND  A  SEA-WAY  TO  INDIA. — 
PRINCE  HENRY  THE  NAVIGATOR.  —  BIRTH  AND  EARLY  LIFE  OF  CHRISTOPHER 
COLUMBUS.  —  His  DESIGN  OF  A  WESTERN  VOYAGE  TO  INDIA. — FAITH  IN  HIS 
DIVINE  MISSION.  —  THE  THEORIES  OF  CONTEMPORARY  GEOGRAPHERS. — His  LIFE 
IN  SPAIN.  —  THE  COUNCIL  AT  SALAMANCA.  —  His  FIRST  VOYAGE. —  His  BELIEF 

THAT   HE   HAS   DISCOVERED    INDIA. TlIE   DELUSION   OF   HIS   LlFE. HlS   BRIEF 

HONOR  AND  FINAL  DISGRACE. 

IN  the  far  East  had  reigned  for  centuries  a  line  of  mighty  monarchs 
of  the  race  of  Kublai  Khan.     Among  many  provinces  owing  them 


THE  CITY  OF  QUINSAI.  93 

allegiance  was  that  of  Mangi,  bordering  on  the  sea.  In  this  province 
alone,  Marco  Polo  said,  there  were  twelve  thousand  cities,  all  within  a 
few  days'  travel  of  each  other.  Quinsai,  whose  circuit  was  a 
hundred  miles,  was  only  one  of  a  hundred  and  forty  cities  of  M^ngi"10' 
standing  in  such  contiguity  that  they  seemed  but  one.  A 
permanent  garrison  of  thirty  thousand  soldiers  guarded  Quinsai  alone ; 
a  police  force  of  some  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  was  always  on 
duty  to  preserve  its  domestic  peace  and  order.  Spanning  its  many 
streets  were  twelve  thousand  noble  bridges,  some  of  them  so  lofty  that 
ships  could  sail  beneath  without  interruption  to  the  passage  of  the 
multitudes  that  were  continually  crossing  them,  to  and  fro.  Its  prin 
cipal  street,  forty  paces  in  width,  bridged  in  many  places  by  these 
works  of  beautiful  architecture,  extended  from  one  side  of  the  city  to 
the  other  in  a  straight  line.  At  intervals  of  every  four  miles  on  this 
magnificent  avenue  of  thirty-three  miles  were  market-places,  each  two 
miles  in  compass  ;  behind  them  ran  a  canal,  on  the  banks  of  which 
were  great  stone  warehouses  always  filled  with  precious  merchandise. 
In  these  spacious  marts  from  forty  to  fifty  thousand  people  met  three 
days  in  the  week  to  trade,  thronging  through  the  streets  that  radiated 
in  every  direction.  These  thoroughfares  were  all  of  great  width  and 
length,  and  paved  with  stone,  as  indeed  were  all  the  highways,  in 
city  and  country,  of  the  province  of  Mangi. 

The  sewerage  of  Quinsai  was  more  perfect  than  that  of  any  modern 
city,  for  the  waters  of  a  river,  that  bounded  it  on  one  side,  Cit  of 
were  led  through  the  streets  and  washed  completely  away  Q"50841- 
all  filth  and  waste  matter  to  a  lake  on  the  other  side,  whence  they 
were  carried  out  to  sea.  Besides  this  system  of  thorough  drainage,  for 
the  preservation  of  the  public  health,  there  were  free  baths  of  hot  and 
cold  water,  with  attendants,  male  and  female,  for  daily  bathing  was 
the  habit  of  this  luxurious  people  from  earliest  childhood  ;  and  for 
the  sick  and  feeble  the  hospitals  were  "  exceeding  many,"  where  all 
were  taken  care  of  who  were  not  able  to  work.  A  trained  fire-depart 
ment  was  in  constant  readiness  to  protect  the  city  from  conflagrations, 
and  at  a  fixed  hour  of  the  night  the  putting  out  of  domestic  lights 
and  fires  was  enforced  by  severe  penalties,  as  a  safeguard  against 
accident.  All  the  inhabitants  were  required  to  be  within  their 
houses  at  a  certain  time,  and  from  every  guard-house  and  on  every 
bridge  each  hour  of  the  day  and  night  was  struck  on  great  resounding 
basons  or  gongs. 

The  marble  palace  of  the  king,  with  its  arcades  and  corridors,  its  ter 
races  and  courts,  its  lakes  and  groves  and  gardens,  filled  a  circuit  of 
ten  miles  ;  its  wide  expanse  of  roof,  profusely  wrought  in  gold,  rested 
upon  hundreds  of  pillars  of  pure  gold  cunningly  adorned  in  arabesque 


94  INDIA  — THE   EL   DORADO   OF  COLUMBUS.       [CHAP.  V. 

of  azure,  to  heighten  the  native  richness  of  the  yellow  metal.  Here  on 
holydays,  sacred  to  their  gods,  were  feasts  of  ten  and  twelve  days'  con 
tinuance,  with  guests  ten  thousand  at  a  time. 

The  annual  revenue  of  the  king  from  salt  alone,  from  Quinsai  and 
its  associated  cities,  comprising  only  one  ninth  of  Mangi,  was  six  mil 
lion,  four  hundred  thousand  ducats ;  from  other  products,  sixteen  mil 
lion  eight  hundred  thousand  more.  The  population  of  this  one  of  the 
one  hundred  and  forty  contiguous  cities  was  one  million  and  six  hun 
dred  thousand  families  ;  they  consumed  daily  nine  thousand  four  hun 
dred  and  sixty  pounds  of  pepper,  and  "  hence,"  says  Polo,  "  may  be 
guessed  the  quantity  of  victuals,  flesh,  wine,  and  spices  were  there 
spent."  So  wealthy  and  prosperous  and  luxurious  were  these  people, 
that  a  part  of  every  day  was  given  up  to  pleasure  in  boats  and  barges 
fitted  up  for  banquets  on  the  lake  ;  in  driving  about  the  long  and 
beautiful  streets  in  chariots  lined  with  cushions  and  cloths  of  silk ;  in 
feasting  in  palaces  gorgeously  furnished  and  kept  for  public  use  ;  in 
loitering  in  public  gardens,  or  resting  in  inviting  bowers  scattered 
through  them  at  convenient  distances.  And  this  city,  "  for  the  ex 
cellency  thereof,"  said  Marco  Polo,  "  hath  the  name  of  the  city  of 
Heaven  ;  for  in  the  world  there  is  not  the  like,  or  a  place  in  which 
are  found  so  many  pleasures,  that  a  man  would  think  he  were  in 
Paradise." 

Of  all  the  provinces  of  the  East,  Mangi  was  the  richest,  as  it  was 
also  the  most  accessible  from  the  sea.  But  all  the  kingdoms,  both  of 
Mangi  and  Cathay,  teemed  with  people,  abounded  in  precious  com 
modities  of  nature  and  of  art,  and  their  cities,  villages,  fortresses,  and 
palaces  were  tens  upon  tens  of  thousands.  Armenia  the  Greater  was, 
)ike  Mangi  and  Cathay,  tributary  to  the  great  Khan.  There  also  were 
many  opulent  communities  ;  out  of  its  soil  sprang  wholesome  hot  wa 
ters  for  the  curing  of  all  diseases  ;  on  the  top  of  one  of  its  mountains 
Noah's  Ark  still  rested.  At  the  city  of  Cambalu,  on  the  northeast  of 
Cathay,  where  the  Khan  resided  for  three  winter  months,  his  palace 
was  of  marble  with  a  roof  of  gold,  so  blazoned  in  many  colors  that 
nothing  but  gold  and  imagery  met  the  eye.  It  stood  in  the  centre  of 
the  city,  which  was  a  succession  of  courts  from  one  to  six  miles  in 
width,  each  surrounded  with  a  wall,  the  outer  wall  of  all  extending 
eight  miles  on  each  side  of  a  square.  In  one  of  these  courts  stood  al 
ways  a  guard  of  ten  thousand  soldiers  ;  in  the  imperial  stables  near 
by  were  five  thousand  elephants. 

From  Cambalu  radiated  roads  to  the  most  distant  bound- 
of  the  Great    aries  of  the  empire  ;  at  every  twenty-five  or  thirty  miles  on 
these  highways  were  post-houses,  wherein  were  many  cham 
bers  fit  to  lodge  a  king,  and  relays  of  horses  were  kept  always  in  readi* 


THE  GREAT  KHAN.  95 

ness  for  the  use  of  the  royal  messengers.  Of  these  post-houses  there 
were  about  ten  thousand  in  the  whole  empire,  and  the  number  of 
horses  kept  in  them  exceeded  two  hundred  thousand.  Between  these 
houses,  at  intervals  of  three  or  four  miles,  were  other  stations  where 
runners  swift  of  foot  always  stood  ready  to  carry  letters  on  the  king's 
business,  having  at  their  girdles  little  bells,  the  ringing  whereof  gave 
notice  of  their  coming,  and  as  they  met,  the  letters  were  handed  from 
one  to  another  and  thus  hurried  forward  without  a  moment's  delay. 
The  bridges  on  these  roads,  over  the  many  rivers  and  canals  which 
watered  this  wonderful  country,  were  noble  works  of  art,  built  some 
times  of  polished  serpentine,  sometimes  of  beautiful  marbles,  stately 
with  many  columns,  ornamented  with  great  stone  lions  and  other 
sculptures,  curiously  and  beautifully  wrought. 

In  another  city,  Ciandu,  the  Khan  made  his  residence  for  three  of 
the  summer  months,  and  there  also  was  "  a  marvellous  palace  of 
marble  and  other  stones,"  in  an  enclosure  of  sixteen  miles.  So  large 
was  the  banquet-hall  of  this  royal  residence,  that  the  Khan's  table  in 
the  centre  was  eighty  yards  high.  Here  the  royal  stud  was  a  herd  of 
white  horses  and  mares  to  the  number  of  ten  thousand,  which  were  in 
a  manner  sacred  ;  for  none  dared  to  go  before  or  to  hinder  these 
animals  wherever  they  went,  and  none  were  allowed  to  drink  of  the 
milk  of  the  mares  except  they  were  of  the  imperial  blood. 

The  Khan's  army  was  almost  like  the  sands  of  the  sea  for  numbers, 
and  so  magnificent  was  the  state  of  its  many  generals  that  they  sat 
in  chairs  of  solid  silver.  The  royal  fleet  was  fifteen  thousand  sail, 
and  each  vessel  carried  fifteen  horses  and  twenty  men,  or  two  hun 
dred  and  twenty-five  thousand  horses  and  three  hundred  thousand 
men  for  the  fleet.  But  the  merchant  marine  far  exceeded  this,  for  in 
a  single  port  Polo  saw  five  thousand  ships  engaged  in  trade,  and  there 
were  many  cities  that  numbered  still  more. 

In  one  province  a  mountain  of  turquoises  pierced  the  clouds ;  in  a 
valley  of  another  nestled  a  lake  where  pearls  were  so  plentiful  that 
had  there  been  freedom  to  gather  them,  pearls  would  have  been  so 
common  as  to  be  of  little  worth.  There  were  many  mines  of  silver, 
many  rivers  whose  beds  were  spangled  with  gold.  The  beasts  and 
birds  were  various  and  wonderful :  serpents  with  two  little  feet  near 
their  heads,  with  claws  like  lions,  with  eyes  bigger  than  a  loaf ;  hens 
that  had  no  feathers,  but  were  covered  with  hair ;  birds  of  gorgeous 
plumage  ;  oxen  as  large  as  elephants,  with  manes  as  fine  as  silk ; 
game  of  all  kinds,  which  the  Khan  hunted  with  hawks  and  with 
leopards  seated  on  the  backs  of  horses,  whence  they  sprang  at  the 
prey.  Spices  grew  everywhere ;  and  of  fruit  there  were  nuts  as  large 
as  a  child's  head,  filled  with  a  delicious  milk,  pears  that  weighed  ten 


INDIA  — THE   EL   DORADO    OF  COLUMBUS.       [CHAP.  V. 


pounds,  peaches  two  pounds  each ;  canes  fifteen  paces  long  and  four 
palms  thick,  somewhat,  no  doubt,  like  those  washed  up  on  the  beach 
of  the  island  of  Porto  Santo  and  seen  by  Columbus,  grew  everywhere 
in  abundance.  The  people  of  this  favored  land  clothed  themselves  in 
cloth  of  gold,  in  silks,  in  lawns  and  cambrics  of  the  finest  fabric,  in 
furs  of  ermine  and  of  sable,  which  they  called  "  the  Queen  of  Furs." 

Fifteen  hundred  miles  from  the  coast  of  Mangi  was  the  island  of 
Cipango,  —  Japan,  —  where  gold  was  so  plentiful  that  the  palace  of 
the  king  was  covered  with  golden  plates,  as  the  churches  of  Europe 
were  roofed  with  lead  ;  the  windows  were  gilded ;  the  floors  even 
were  paved  with  gold.  There  also  were  many  precious  pearls.  In 
the  surrounding  sea  there  were  four  hundred  and  forty  other  islands, 
most  of  them  peopled,  whereon  grew  not  a  tree  that  yielded  not  a  good 
smell,  while  many  bore  spices,  and  where  also  gold  abounded. 

All  the  people  of  these  numerous  and  opulent  kingdoms  were  infi 
dels  and  idolaters,  and  whoever  should  make  of  them  and  their  rich  pos 
sessions  a  prey  would  be  doing  a  service  to  God  and  the  true  Church. 
Of  the  right  to  do  so  there  was  no  question,  for  it  was  held  to  be  as 
much  the  duty  of  the  Christian  as  the  privilege  of  the  conqueror,  to 
spoil  the  unbelievers.  Even  if  they  were  not  spoiled,  a  power  and 
prosperity  hitherto  unknown  would  surely  come  to  the  nation  that 
should  open  easy  communication  with  a  people  whose  riches  seemed 

inexhaustible,  whose  commerce  exceeded 
that  of  all  the  world  beside,  whose  arts 
were  far  beyond  anything  known  in 
Europe,  whose  luxury  was  of  a  refine 
ment  and  magnificence  hardly  to  be  con 
ceived  of  by  the  ordinary  European 
mind. 

The  great  problem  of  the  age  was  to 
reach  this  "  far  Cathay  "  by  sea.  Navi 
gation   grew  to  a  science,  drawing  all 
ether   sciences    to   its   aid.      Dominion 
over  the    sea   increased  with  the  com 
mon  use  of  the  magnetic  needle  in  the 
new  mariners'  compass  ;    with  the  im 
proved  methods  of  drawing  sea-charts  ; 
with  the  additions  made  to  the  astrolabe 
-  which  the  quadrant  afterwards  superseded  —  by  Martin  Behaim  and 
Endeavors  to  ^od"g°  ancl  Joseph  the  Jew,  the  king's  physicians,  the  three 
b^sealnd'a    aklest  astronomers  and  geographers  of  Portugal.     But  how 
ever  much  this  increase  of  knowledge  advanced  the  commerce 
and  civilization  of  Europe,  to  push  out  beyond  its  confines  and  find  the 


Astrolabe. 


PRINCE  HENRY  THE  NAVIGATOR.  97 

way  to  that  "  East "  of  marvels  and  mysteries  was  the  impelling  mo 
tive  of  the  most  enlightened  and  most  energetic  minds  of  the  fifteenth 
century.     It    was    only   in   royal  treasure-chests,   however,  that   the 
means  could  often  be  found  for   the  expenditure  involved  in  long 
expeditions ;  still  more  the  civil  conditions,  and  moral  and  intellectual 
subservience  of  the  age,  suppressed  all  individual  effort  that  wanted 
a  regal  sanction.     But  fortunately  in  the  fifteenth  century  there  came 
forward  a  princely  adventurer,  Henry  of  Portugal,  surnamed  Henr  of 
The  Navigator,  who  not  only  was  willing  to  listen  to  and  to  ^g^e 
aid  all  those  who  proposed  voyages  of  discovery,  but  was  Navigator 
himself  diligent  above  all  other  men  of  his  time  in  forwarding  such 
enterprises.     By  his  energy,  generosity,  and  success,  an  impulse  was 
given  to  cosmographical  studies,  and  ex 
peditions  under  his  auspices  or  by  his  ex 
ample  were  pushed  to  parts  where  hitherto 
it  was  supposed  impossible  to  penetrate.1 
Rejecting  the  absurdities  which  'some  of 
the  wisest  of  men  then  accepted  as  true,  — 
that  human  life  could  hardly  be  sustained 
in  the  intense  heat  of  the  torrid  zone,  and 
that  it  was  impossible  the  antipodal  regions 
could  be  inhabited,  because  it  was  absurd 
to  suppose  that  there  could  be  a  people 
that  went  about  their  ordinary  business 

with   their  heads  downward,  —  rejecting         Prince  Henry  the  Navigator' 
all  such  conjectures  as  unphilosophical,  he  devoted  his  princely  rev 
enues  and  all  the  energies  of  a  richly  endowed  character,  to  enlarging 
the  boundaries  of  geographical  knowledge.  < 

The  love  of  science  was,  perhaps,  the  primal  motive  which  ruled 
Prince  Henry  ;  but  to  this  was  added  a  desire  to  enhance  the  glory 
of  Portugal,  and  to  extend  the  blessings  of  the  Christian  religion 
for  the  salvation  of  souls.  A  desire  to  do  good  — "  talent  de  bien 
faire  "  —  was  his  chosen  motto,  and  such,  undoubtedly,  was  the  aim 
of  his  life.  The  particular  good,  however,  that  he  never  lost  sight  of, 
was  —  India.  He  gathered  men  learned  in  the  sciences  about  him  in 
his  secluded  home  on  the  promontory  of  Sagres,  where  the  unmeas 
ured,  restless  sea  was  always  before  his  eyes,  and  the  melancholy  mur 
mur  or  the  mighty  roar  of  those  mysterious  waters  never  left  his  ears. 
Of  his  princely  court  he  made  a  sort  of  geographical  college  ;  he  pro 
posed  that  his  seamen  should  fearlessly  cross  the  line  and  breathe  the 
heated  air  which  none,  it  was  said,  could  breathe  and  live ;  he  would 

1  See  Life  of  Prince  Henry  of  Portugal,  surnamed  The  Navigator ;  and  its  Results.     By 
Richard  Henry  Major.     London,  1 868. 


98  INDIA— THE   EL   DORADO   OF   COLUMBUS.       [CHAP.  V. 

pass  Cape  Nam  or  Non —  so  called  because,  according  to  the  proverb, 
"  Whoever  passes  Cape  Not  will  return  or  not ;  "  he  would  bring  the 
benighted  heathen  of  Africa,  from  its  Mediterranean  coast  to  its  far 
thest  southern  limit,  to  a  knowledge  of  Christ  and  the  true  Church  ; 
but  the  end  of  all  was  to  double  that  southern  extremity  and  open  a 
new  route  to  India. 

India  —  always  India.  It  was  well  to  win  souls  to  God  ;  it  was 
well  to  dispel  the  clouds  of  human  ignorance,  whether  Christian  or 
heathen  ;  it  was  well  to  augment  the  glory  of  states  and  dynasties, 
and  add  to  the  sum  of  human  happiness,  by  the  discovery  of  strange 
countries.  But  commerce  with  the  gorgeous  East,  so  teeming  with 
all  precious  things,  would  enrich  kingdoms  and  make  states  and 
princes  powerful.  Courts  and  palaces,  lords  and  ladies,  the  increasing 
wealth,  refinement,  and  luxury  of  the  age,  demanded  its  rich  stuffs, 
its  precious  stones,  its  aromatic  spices,  all  its  costly  merchandise. 
Now  they  could  be  had  only  in  some  small  degree  by  tedious,  dan 
gerous,  and  expensive  travel,  partly  overland  through  wide  deserts, 
through  hostile  countries,  a  devious  and  a  doubtful  way.  Great,  then, 
would  be,  not  the  glory  only,  but  the  profit  also,  of  that  man  or  that 
people  who  should  shorten  that  way  in  distance,  remove  its  difficulties 
and  its  perils,  and  pour  the  precious  commodities  of  Asia  in  unstinted 
abundance  into  the  lap  of  Europe. 

The  devotion  of  a  long  life  and  of  his  great  revenues  by  Henry  did 
not  solve  this  problem  while  he  lived  ;  but  the  success  and  importance 
of  the  many  expeditions  undertaken  by  his  orders,  and  the  mari 
time  policy  he  established,  so  extended  the  knowledge  of  the  globe, 
so  added  to  the  power  and  wealth  of  Portugal,  and  led  generally  to 
results  so  brilliant,  that  thenceforward  for  nearly  two  hundred  years, 
the  spirit  of  adventure  and  the  zeal  for  discovery  animated  every 
maritime  state  of  Europe,  and  opened  a  new  world  to  the  races  and 
the  civilization  of  the  old.  Not,  indeed,  that  the  modern  discoverers 
of  the  Western  Hemisphere  were  in  search  of  another  continent ;  they 
were  as  far  from  being  guided  by  any  such  definite  purpose  as  their 
predecessors  of  earlier  centuries  were  innocent  of  all  knowledge  that 
they  had  made  such  a  discovery  when  accident  threw  them  upon 
strange  shores. 

Columbus,  like  the  navigators  of  Prince  Henry,  meant  to  find  a 
new  route  to  the  East,  only  in  a  fresh  direction ;  and  he  died  in  the 
belief,  after  four  voyages  to  the  New  World,  that  the  countries  he 
had  discovered  were  literally  the  Western  Indies  —  the  coasts  of  Asia 
reached  by  sailing  west.  The  difference  between  him  and  those 
who  by  chance  crossed  the  Atlantic  before  him  was  that  he,  impelled 
by  a  fervid  religious  faith  and  by  conclusions  drawn  from  scientific 


EARLY  LIFE  OF  COLUMBUS.  99 

study,  had  boldly  sought  to  explore  the  unknown  on  which  they  had 
only  been  ignorantly  driven. 

The   father  of   Columbus  had   followed  the  humble  calling   of   a 
carder  of  wool.     But  among  his  kindred  were  some  who  led  - 

Christopher 

a  seafaring  life,  and  with  them  from  the  age  of  fourteen  a  Columbus, 
ship  was  the  home  of  the  son.  One  or  two  of  these  relatives  were 
the  servants  of  any  state  that  would  give  them  a  roving  commission 
to  fight  against  its  enemies ;  and  if  a  commission  were  wanting,  they 
sought  and  found  a  foe  in  any  ship  carrying  a  cargo  worth  the  taking. 
They  did  not  differ  much  from  what  in  later  times  was  called  a 
pirate  ;  but  in  their  own  age  they  had  the  reputation  which  a  priv 
ateer  has  had  in  ours.  It  was  with  such  sea  rovers  that  the  great  cap 
tain  learned  the  practice  of  navigation  ;  learned  how  to  carry  himself 
in  fight  when,  sword  in  hand,  he  sprang  over  the  bulwarks  of  a  hostile 
vessel ;  learned  how  to  control  the  rough  and  lawless  men  with  whom 
he  sailed,  now  by  the  enforcement  of  an  iron  discipline,  now  by  those 
arts  of  persuasion  of  which,  with  his  winning  speech  and  commanding 
presence,  he  was  master.  In  one  of  these  sea  fights,  off  the  coast  of 
Portugal,  which  lasted  from  morning  till  night,  the  vessels,  lashed 
together  by  iron  grapplings,  became  enveloped  in  flames,  and  the  only 
escape  from  the  fire  was  to  jump  into  the  sea.  Columbus  went  over 
board  with  the  rest,  and,  being  an  expert  swimmer,  swam,  with  the 
aid  of  an  oar,  eight  leagues  to  land.  He  found  himself  not  far  from 
Lisbon,  where  there  were  many  of  his  countrymen,  —  Genoese, —  who 
received  him  kindly.  The  incident  is  related  on  the  authority  of  his 
son  Fernando,  and  if  there  is  an  anachronism,  as  there  seems  to  be, 
as  to  the  date  of  the  particular  naval  battle  referred  to  and  the  time 
of  the  residence  of  Columbus  in  Lisbon,  the  mistake,  probably,  is  in 
confounding  one  engagement  with  another.  In  Lisbon,  at  any  rate, 
he  was  living  before  he  was  thirty  years  of  age,  having  abandoned  his 
roving  life,  and  supporting  himself  and  his  father's  family  at  home  in 
Genoa  by  drawing  maps  and  sea-charts. 

Here  in  Lisbon  he  became  acquainted  with,  and  soon  married,  the 
Doila  Felipa  Moniz  Perestrello,  a  daughter  of  a  late  governor  of 
Porto  Santo,  one  of  the  Madeira  Islands,  and  a  renowned  navigator 
under  Prince  Henry.  The  charts  and  journals  of  Perestrello  thus 
came  into  possession  of  Columbus ;  and  going  afterward  to  Residence  of 
Porto  Santo,  with  his  wife,  he  was  brought  into  familiar  £t01t£?bus 
intercourse  with  Pedro  Correo,  a  navigator  of  some  distinc-  Ma^""18- 
tion,  who  had  married  another  daughter  of  the  late  governor.  This 
family  connection  was  both  an  incentive  and  a  help  to  his  cosmograph- 
ical  studies,  and  it  was  at  this  period  of  his  life  that  he  became  per 
suaded  of  the  feasibility  of  a  western  passage  to  India.  In  the 


100 


INDIA  — THE  ELDORADO    OF   COLUMBUS.       [CHAP.  V. 


Madeiras  he  found  people  who  believed  they  had  seen  ample  evidence 
of  the  truth  of  the  strange  stories  of  the  islands  of  St.  Brandan  and 
of  The  Seven  Cities,  which  were  supposed  to  be  somewhere  in  the 
Western  Ocean.  He  was  told  of  pieces  of  curiously-carved  wood,  one 
of  them  found  by  Correo,  his  brother-in-law  ;  joints  of  gigantic  cane, 
such  as  Ptolemy  said  grew  in  India ;  branches  of  pine  ;  covered 
canoes ;  the  bodies  of  two  strange  men,  differing  in  complexion  from 
either  Europeans  or  Africans ;  and  all  these  had  been  picked  up  at 
sea,  or  were  found  upon  the  beach,  and  had  evidently  drifted  from  the 
west.  There  is  also  a  story  which  seems  to  have  been  current  in  the 
life-time  of  Columbus,  accepted  by  some  historians,  rejected  by  others 
as  an  attempt  to  detract  from  his  fair  fame,  but  passed  over  in  silence 
by  those  who  might,  from  their  own  knowledge,  have  either  contra 
dicted  or  confirmed  it.  It  is  that  about  the  year  1484  a  vessel  com 
manded  by  one  Alonzo  San 
chez  was  driven  across  the 
ocean  by  storm,  and  that  he 
and  his  crew  landed  and  spent 
some  time  on  the  island  of 
Hispaniola.  On  their  return 
they  again  encountered  tem 
pestuous  weather,  and  only 
five  out  of  sixteen  survived 
the  hardships  they  were  com 
pelled  to  suffer.  Sanchez 
found  a  refuge  in  the  house 
of  Columbus,  who  learned 
from  him  the  particulars  of 


ship  of  Fifteenth  Century. 

his  western  voyage  and  the  land  he  had  discovered,  receiving  from 
him  also,  when  he  died,  his  charts  and  journal.  If  the  story  be  true, 
the  information  Columbus  thus  gained  could  have  only  helped  to  con 
firm  his  theorv,  which  certainly  was  not  founded  on  a  single  fact  or 
a  single  supposition. 

He  found  from  ancient  authors  that  a  belief  in  'such  western  lands, 

sometimes  under  one  name,  sometimes  under  another,  and  a  belief  in 

the  possibility  of  the  navigation  of  the  western  seas,  had  long  existed. 

From  his  geographical  and  astronomical  studies,  in  works 

His  theory  . 

of  the  size      ancient  and  modern,  he  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the 

of  the  globe.  ,  in 

earth  was  in  shape  a  sphere,  but  that  it  was  much  smaller 
than  it  had  been  generally  supposed  to  be.  Two  thirds  of  it  at  least, 
he  was  sure,  was  occupied  by  Europe  and  Asia,  and  the  eastern  coast 
of  Asia  must,  in  that  case,  come  within  the  other  third  of  the  whole 
circumference  and  stretch  toward  the  western  coast  of  Europe.  Other 


THEORIES  OF  COLUMBUS.  101 

men  more  learned  than  he  had  held  this  opinion,  but  he  was  the  first 
who  proposed  to  put  it  to  a  practical  test?.  '_  If ,  he  were  right  as  to  the 
size  of  the  globe,  —  the  one  weak  point  o//  tite:  argument,*  and  the  one 
which  his  opponents  seem  to  have  strangely;  overlooked, ^o?,;ak  least, 
did  not  answer,  resorting  rather  to  any  ctcginatie  absurdity  m  Teply  to 
him,  — if  he  were  right  in  that,  his  reasoning  was  unanswerable.  A 
shorter  and  a  better  way  to  India  than  that  sought  by  Prince  Henry's 
navigators,  round  the  extremity  of  Africa,  would  be  to  sail  directly 
west. 

The  Sea  of  Darkness  and  the  monsters  that  guarded  it  were  fables 
fit  only  to  frighten  children.  Modern  voyagers  had  exposed  the  fal 
lacy  of  the  supposed  fatal  heat  of  the  tropics.  In  one  of  his  roving 
voyages  Columbus  himself  had  sailed,  as  he  says  in  a  letter  to  his  son 
Fernando,  a  hundred  leagues  beyond  the  island  of  Thule,  to  another 
island,  —  Iceland,  —  where  "  the  English,  especially  those  from  Bris 
tol,  go  with  their  merchandise."  This  voyage  was  made  in  1467, 
long  before  his  attention  was  turned  to  the  question  which  so  ab 
sorbed  him  ten  years  later.  Some  have  conjectured  that  he  then 
gained  a  knowledge  of  the  discoveries  of  the  Northmen  and  the  colo 
nization  of  Vinland  more  than  four  and  a  half  centuries  earlier.  But 
this  is  very  unlikely.  It  is  possible  that  the  ship  in  which  he  sailed, 
and  which,  no  doubt,  was  on  a  privateering  cruise,  made  a  short  stay 
in  Iceland  ;  but  the  young  sailor  of  one-and-twenty,  if  ashore  at  all, 
would  find  something  else  to  do  than  to  ransack  dusty  monastic  archives 
for  forgotten  manuscripts  in  ancient  Norse,  or  to  seek  for  old  traditions 
among  learned  monks  who  would  relate  them  in  Latin.  He  recalled 
the  fact,  however,  that  he  had  sailed  so  far  beyond  the  uttermost 
western  boundary  of  Northern  Europe,  as  one  among  the  many  other 
reasons  he  had  for  maintaining  that  navigation  to  the  west  was  pos 
sible.  The  Indies,  the  kingdoms  of  the  Great  Khan,  the  dominions 
of  that  mysterious  potentate,  Prester  John,  the  island  of  Cipango,  or 
Japan,  perhaps  many  another  island  along  the  Asiatic  coast,  could 
easily,  he  was  sure,  be  reached  by  the  mariner  bold  enough  to  defy 
all  fancied  terrors,  and  to  sail  for  thirty  or  forty  days  and  about  a 
thousand  leagues  into  those  unknown  seas. 

This  was  the  work  to  which  Columbus  consecrated  his  life,  and  it 
was  for  this,  he  believed,  that  God  had  singled  him  out  and  set  him 
apart  from  his  fellow-men.  He  was  a  most  diligent  student  of  the 
Bible.  Its  prophecies,  he  was  persuaded,  were  to  be  fulfilled  when 
rapid  and  easy  communication  was  established  between  the  uttermost 
parts  of  the  earth,  and  all  the  human  family  were  brought  within  the 
saving  influence  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church.  He  looked  upon  him 
self  as  the  destined  "  Christ-bearer"  to  far-distant  and  benighted 


102 


INDIA— THE   EL   DORADO  OF  COLUMBUS.       [CHAP.  V. 


lands.1    "  God  made  me,"  he  said,  u  the  messenger  of  the  new  heaven 

and  the  new  earth  of  which  He 
spoke  in  the  Apocalypse  by  St. 
John,  after  having  spoken  of  it 
by  the  mouth  of  Isaiah  ;  and  He 
showed  me  the  spot  where  to 
find  it."2  The  power  and  the 
riches  which,  he  was  persuaded, 
he  could  win  for  himself  and  the 
sovereign  whom  he  should  serve, 
he  would  win  to  the  glory  of 
God  in  the  bringing  of  souls  to 
Christ  in  the  East  and  in  the 
West,  and  his  share  of  the  treas 
ure  gained  he  would  devote  to 
equipping  armies  to  be  led  to 
the  rescue  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre 
from  the  hands  of  the  Infidel. 
He  was  as  genuine  a  fanatic  as 
Peter  the  Hermit,  or  a  modern 

The  Christ-bearer,  from  Map  of  Juan  de  la  Cosa.  u  AdventlSt."         "  111    the     6X6011- 

tion  of  my  western  enterprise  to  India,"  he  said,  "  human  reason, 
mathematics,  and  charts  availed  me  nothing.  The  design 
was  simply  accomplished  as  the  prophet  Isaiah  had  pre 
dicted.  Before  the  end  of  the  world,  all  the  prophecies 
must  be  fulfilled,  the  gospel  be  preached  all  over  the  earth,  and  the 
holy  city  restored  to  the  Church.  Our  Lord  wished  to  do  a  miracle 
by  my  voyage  to  India.  It  was  necessary  to  hasten  his  purpose,  be 
cause,  according  to  my  calculations,  there  only  remain  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years  to  the  end  of  the  world."  3 

But  this  faith  in  his  divine  mission  was,  nevertheless,  a  corollary  to 

1  His  son  Ferdinand  says  that  as  most  of  his  father's  affairs  were  guarded  by  a  special 
providence,  so  there  was  "  a  mystery  "  about  his  name  and  surname.     He  was  a  true  Co 
lumbus  or  Columba  (a  dove),  inasmuch  as  he  conveyed  the  knowledge  of  Christ  to  the 
people  of  the  New  World  even  as  the  Holy  Ghost  was  revealed  in  the  figure  of  a  dove  at 
St.   John's   baptism.     And   as   St.  Christopher   was   so   called  —  Christopher,  or  Christ 
bearer  —  because  he  had  carried  the  Saviour,  according  to  the  legend,  across  the  deep 
waters  at  his  own  imminent  peril,  so  this  Christopher  "  went  over  safe  himself,  and  his 
company,  that  those  Indian  nations  might  become  citizens  and  inhabitants  of  the  Church 
triumphant  in  heaven."     The  representation  of  Columbus  as  the  Christ-bearer  on  the  old 
maps  is  copied  from  the  pictures  of  the  gigantic  and  popular  saint,  —  St.  Christopher, — 
which  were  common  in  the  churches  early  in  the  sixteenth  century. 

2  Letter  of  the  Admiral  to  the  (quondam)  nurse  of  the  Prince  John,  in  the  Select  Letters 
of  Christopher  Columbus,  translated  by  R.  H.  Major,  for  the  Hakluyt  Society,  p.  148. 

8  Letter  of  Columbus  to  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  in  the  Profecias.     See  Humboldt' 
Examen  Critique,  Tome  I.,  p.  15. 


Fanaticism 
of  Colum 
bus. 


THEORIES  OF  OTHER  GEOGRAPHERS. 


103 


the  logic  of  the  sphere.  It  was  because  the  world  was  round,  because 
one  third  of  it  yet  remained  to  sail  across,  and  because  it  was  possible 
to  sail  across  it,  that  God  had  given  him  that  mission.  On  the  ever 
lasting  truths  of  science  must  rest  the  possibility  of  human  achieve 
ment.  God  would  not  appoint  to  him  the  task  of  bringing  the  ends  of 
the  earth  together  if  it  could  not  be  done.  The  theory  of  the  spherical 
form  of  the  earth  was  not  new,  for  that  was  taught  five  hundred  years 
before  the  Christian  era.  But  the  ancient  geographers  supposed  that 
the  ocean  of  the  western  hemisphere  was  of  such  expanse  as  to  be 
practically  if  not  absolutely  impassable.  It  was  on  this  all-important 


Circulus     Equinocalialis     ST.TIIOMAS/? 


Globus  Martini  Behaim 

Narinbergensis 

1492. 

Globe  of  Martin   Behaim. 

point,  the  size  of  the  globe,  that  the  learned  men  of  modern  times 
assumed  that  they  had  received  new  light.  The  globe  was  much 
smaller  than  the  ancients  supposed ;  the  ocean  west  of  Europe  covered 
only  one  third  of  it,  and  then  came  Asia.  Columbus  was  not  a  man 
of  wide  learning,  but  he  had  diligently  informed  himself  of  all  that 
had  been  advanced  on  these  points  by  both  ancient  and  modern 
writers,  and  he  knew  that  the  geographers  of  the  highest  reputation  of 
his  own  time  maintained  the  theory,  on  which  he  relied,  not  only  of 
the  shape  but  of  the  size  of  the  earth. 

From  these  he  sought  argument  and  encouragement.    He  can  hardly 


104  INDIA— THE   EL   DORADO    OF   COLUMBUS.       [CHAP.  V. 

have  failed  to  know  Martin  Behaim,  in  the  service  of  the  King  of 

Portugal  while  Columbus  was  in  vain   attendance  upon  that  court, 

.    and  who  showed  upon  his  famous  globe,  completed  in  1492, 

Behaiin  and  t>  '  * 

Toscaneiii.  t;uat  ne  had  no  doubt  of  the  proximity  of  Asia  to  the  western 
coast  of  Europe.  From  Paul  Toscaneiii,  of  Florence,  we  know  that  he 
received  encouraging  assurances  of  sympathy.  That  learned  physician 
and  cosmographer  confirmed  his  opinion  as  to  the  certainty  and  ease 
of  a  western  passage  to  India,  and  of  the  fame  that  awaited  him  who 
should  thus  bring  within  easy  reach  those  empires  and  kingdoms 
described  by  Marco  Polo,  whose  account  of  their  opulence  and  gran 
deur  had  so  inflamed  the  imagination  and  fed  the  fanaticism  of  Colum 
bus.  Toscaneiii  sent  him  a  chart  whereon  he  had  laid  down  the  coast 
of  Asia  in  accordance  with  the  descriptions  of  the  Venetian  traveller, 
and  in  the  intervening  ocean  between  that  continent  and  Europe  he 
placed  the  islands  of  Antilla  and  Cipango,  at  convenient  distances,  as 
stopping-places  for  water  and  fresh  provisions  on  the  western  voyage 
to  the  city  of  Quinsai,  in  the  province  of  Cathay. 

It  was  this  sublime  faith,  and  a  knowledge  of  these  supposed  newly- 
Faithof  discovered  facts  of  science,  which  sustained  Columbus  for 
in°hi8DUsS-  eighteen  years  as  a  suppliant,  struggling  with  poverty  and 
sion.  obscurity  in  his  own  person,  with  stupidity,  obstinacy,  in 

credulity  in  others,  begging  from  court  to  court  for  a  royal  sanction  to 
his  enterprise,  and  a  few  ships  to  undertake  it.  And  when  the 
eighteen  years  were  passed  and  their  labor  seemed  all  for  naught,  he 
simply  turned,  sadly  and  wearily  indeed,  but  with  undiminished  zeal 
and  unmoved  convictions,  to  seek  in  a  new  quarter  the  aid  he  must 
have,  and  which  he  was  sure  would  come  at  last.  Should  he  find 
himself  once  on  board  his  fleet,  and  with  its  prows  turned  westward, 
nothing  but  the  hand  of  death  could  have  stayed  his  progress.  To 
turn  back  would  have  been  with  him  to  fly  in  the  face  of  Heaven,  to 
disregard  the  plain  counsels  of  God.  The  story,  always  doubted  by 
the  most  trustworthy  historians,  that  a  day  or  two  before  he  sighted 
Guanahani  he  promised  his  mutinous  and  despairing  followers  to 
return  if  land  was  not  seen  within  three  days,  is  best  confuted  by 
its  own  absurdity.  It  was  a  moral  impossibility  for  him  to  turn  back. 
His  faith  was  of  the  kind  that  removes  mountains,  for  he  was  chosen 
of  God  to  bear  the  glad  tidings  of  salvation  to  millions  of  his  fellow- 
men  before  the  heavens  should  be  rolled  together  as  a  scroll,  that 
near  time  when  the  first  heaven  and  the  first  earth  should  have  passed 
away,  and  when  there  should  be  no  more  sea. 

The  geographical  theory  which  alone  saved  the  proposition  of  a 
western  passage  to  Cathay,  or  China,  from  being  preposterous,  and  on 
which  he  based  his  faith  in  his  divine  mission  and  all  his  hopes  of 


PERSEVERANCE  OF  COLUMBUS. 


105 


worldly  greatness,  he  never  abandoned.  Even  after  his  last  voyage, 
when  he  had  four  times  crossed  and  recrossed  the  Atlantic,  he  said : 
"  The  world  is  but  small ;  out  of  seven  divisions  of  it  the  dry  part 
occupies  six,  and  the  seventh  is  entirely  covered  with  water."  In  all 
his  voyages  he  was  constantly  finding  some  fancied  resemblance  in  the 
names  of  persons  and  places  among  the  Indians  to  cities  or  provinces 
or  princes  of  the  East  mentioned  by  Marco  Polo.  The  impression 
which  the  wonderful  stories  of  that  traveller  had  made  upon  a  mind 


Columbus  on   Shipboard. 


always  ruled  by  a  poetic  temperament  and  a  vivid  imagination, 
and  the  confidence  he  had  in  the  importance  and  magnificence  of 
the  discovery  he  proposed  to  make,  were  deepened  by  still  another 
conviction.  The  wealth  of  David  and  Solomon  in  gold  and  silver,  of 
which  he  read  in  Scripture,  he  believed  came  from  those  parts  of  the 
world  he  expected  to  reach.  Had  he  only  hoped  to  find  a  new  con 
tinent,  inhabited  by  some  nations  of  savages,  though  he  might  still 
have  represented  to  the  sovereigns  of  Portugal,  of  P^ngland,  and  of 
Spain  the  importance  and  the  glory  of  such  a  discovery,  he  would 
have  had  little  of  that  enthusiasm  and  perseverance  with  which  his 
belief  in  the  certainty  of  arriving,  in  little  more  than  a  month,  on  the 


106  INDIA  — THE   EL   DORADO    OF  COLUMBUS.       [CHAP.  V. 

confines  of  the  glorious  East  inspired  him  and  enabled  him  to  inspire 
others.  The  value  and  the  character  of  a  new  continent  could  have 
been  only  conjectural;  but  of  the  fabulous  wealth,  the  noble  cities,  the 
splendor  of  the  palaces,  the  magnitude  of  the  commerce,  the  millions 
of  souls  waiting  for  the  coming  of  a  knowledge  of  Christ  in  that  con 
tinent  to  which  he  meant  to  open  a  new  way,  he  was  sure  he  knew. 
He  asked  for  aid  to  enable  him  to  take  possession,  not  of  some  specu 
lative  advantage,  some  shadowy  good,  but  of  power  and  riches  and 
dominion  that  had  been  seen  of  the  eyes  of  men. 

With  a  patience  that  nothing  could  wear  out,  and  a  perseverance 
that  was  absolutely  unconquerable,  Columbus  waited  and  labored  for 
eighteen  years,  appealing  to  minds  that  wanted  light  and  to  ears  that 
wanted  hearing.  His  ideas  of  the  possibilities  of  navigation  were 
before  his  time.  It  was  one  thing  to  creep  along  the  coast  of  Africa, 
where  the  hold  upon  the  land  need  never  be  lost ;  another,  to  steer 
out  boldly  into  that  wilderness  of  waters  over  which  mystery  and 
darkness  brooded.  Only  the  learned  could  understand  that  the  world 
was  a  globe,  and  that  it  might  be  as  safe  to  sail  upon  one  part  of  its 
surface  as  another  ;  only  the  enlightened  could  see  that  to  penetrate 
the  unknown  might  be  to  find  that  which  was  worth  knowing.  His 
knowledge  was  disbelieved  in  ;  his  religious  zeal  and  aspirations  de 
rided. 

He  first  asked  aid  of  Genoa ;  or  rather  he  first  offered  without  suc 
cess  the  empire  he  proposed  to  acquire  to  that,  his  native,  city.  Then 
he  assured  John  II.  of  Portugal  that  he  would  add  India  to 
to  Genoa  and  his  crown  by  an  easy  voyage  of  less  than  two  months,  instead 
of  the  dubious  route  around  the  distant  and  stormy  cape  of 
Africa.  John  II.,  who  inherited  much  of  the  enthusiasm  of  his 
great  uncle  Prince  Henry  the  Navigator,  for  maritime  adventure,  and 
who  had  sent  one  or  two  expeditions  in  search  of  that  mysterious 
potentate,  Prester  John,  who  reigned,  it  was  supposed,  now  in  Central 
Africa,  now  in  farthest  India,  listened  with  so  much  interest  and 
attention  to  the  proposition  and  the  arguments  of  Columbus  that  he 
referred  the  question  of  the  possibility  of  such  a  voyage  to  the  most 
eminent  men  of  learning  in  church  and  state  in  the  kingdom.  The 
decision  was  against  the  project  as  visionary  and  impracticable.  This 
was  so  unsatisfactory  to  the  king  that,  it  seems  probable,  had  Columbus 
yielded  something  of  his  demand  of  honor  and  profit  to  himself  in 
case  of  success,  the  application  to  John,  in  spite  of  the  advice  of  his 
council,  might  have  been  successful. 

But  at  length,  when  Columbus  had  been  kept  for  years  in  suspense 
and  doubt,  the  Bishop  of  Ceuta,  either  to  get  rid  of  him,  in  any  event, 
or  to  satisfy  the  king,  suggested  that  a  caravel  be  secretly  dispatched 


ATTENDANCE  ON  THE  SOVEREIGNS  OF  SPAIN.  107 

on  such  a  voyage  as  Columbus  had  proposed.  The  advice  was  treach 
erous  and  base,  but  the  king  was  weak  enough  to  accept  it.  A 
caravel  was  sent  out,  under  a  false  pretext,  provided  with  the  charts 
and  other  documents  which  Columbus  had  laid  before  the  council  to 
sustain  his  proposition.  But  those  in  command  of  her  had  little  in 
clination  for  a  venture  which  they  could  only  look  upon  as  mad,  and 
certain,  if  persevered  in,  to  end  in  their  own  destruction.  They  only 
went,  therefore,  as  far  as  the  Cape  de  Verde  Islands,  and  reported,  on 
their  return,  that  the  proposed  westward  voyage  was  absurd  and  im 
possible.  When  Columbus  learned  of  the  trickery  and  trifling  of 
which  he  was  made  the  subject,  he  shook  the  dust  of  Portugal  from 
off  his  feet  to  go  and  offer,  as  he  believed,  to  some  other  prince  who 
should  be  wise  enough  to  accept  them,  the  richest  kingdoms  of  all  the 
earth. 

He  left  Lisbon  in  1483  or  1484,  and  first  went,  it  is  supposed,  to 
Genoa,  to  urge  in  person  upon  the  senate  of  his  native  city  the  pro 
posal  he  had  previously  made  in  writing.     But  whether  made  in  per 
son  or  by  letter  only,  the  offer  was  rejected,  and  he  is  next  heard  of 
in  Spain,  seven  or  eight  years  before  he  sailed  on  his  first  Hisattend. 
voyage.     During   those   years  he  was  often  in  attendance  ^l^rn"* 
upon  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  then  busily  engaged  in  war  for  of  sPain- 
the  recovery  of  Grenada,  sometimes  serving  in  the  campaigns  against 
the  Moors,  but  always  watchful  for  an  opportunity  to  urge  his  suit 
upon  the  sovereigns,  or  to  commend  it  to  any  great  man  of  the  court 
whom  he  could  get  to  listen  to  him.     He  was  thought,  at  length,  so 
far  worthy  of  respect  that  means  were  provided  for  his  maintenance 
when  his  proposition  was  actually  under  consideration,  but  he  sup 
ported  himself,  some  part  of  the  time  at  least,  by  making  maps  and 
charts,  as  he  had  done  in  Portugal. 

He  gained  some  friends  among  the  powerful  and  influential,  but 
none  were  more  useful  and  devoted  than  those  of  humbler  rank  whom 
he  found  without  seeking.  Stopping,  foot-sore  and  weary,  on  his 
journey  to  the  court  of  Spain,  at  the  gate  of  the  convent  of  Santa 
Maria  de  Rabida,  near  Palos,  to  ask  for  bread  and  water  for  his  little 
son,  his  appearance  and  conversation  so  interested  the  prior,  Juan 
Perez  de  Marchina,  that  he  persuaded  the  travellers  to  remain  for 
a  longer  rest  than  Columbus  had  intended.  Rabida  became  thence- 

O 

forth  the  permanent  home  of  his  son,  and  an  occasional  one  for  him 
self,  for  several  years. 

There  lived  at  the  neighboring  port  of  Palos  a  family  of  seafaring 
men,  the  Pinzons,  and  a  physician,  Garcia  Fernandez,  learned  in  geog 
raphy  and  mathematics.  The  prior,  Juan  Perez,  was  himself  inter 
ested  in  all  maritime  subjects,  and  Columbus  found  in  these  men  a 


108  INDIA  — THE   EL   DORADO  OF  COLUMBUS.       [CHAP.  V. 

little  circle  of  friends  so  well  informed  as  to  feel  at  once  an  enthusiastic 
interest  in  the  magnitude  and  importance  of  his  project.  With  them 
he  discussed  his  plans,  his  geographical  theories,  his  astronomical 
problems,  his  pious  aims.  From  them  he  received  encouragement  and 
sympathy  in  the  darkest  hours  of  doubt  and  despondency.  They 
took  up  the  enterprise  with  as  much  zeal  as  if  it  had  been  their  own ; 
Juan  Perez,  who  had  once  been  confessor  to  the  queen,  used  all  his 
personal  influence  with  her  to  forward  the  interests  of  Columbus,  and 
to  secure  him  friends  at  court ;  and  when  at  last  his  negotiations  with 
the  king  and  queen  were  successful,  it  was  among  these  good  friends 
that  he  found  the  means  to  contribute  his  eighth  part  of  the  expenses 
of  the  expedition,  and  two  of  his  three  vessels  were  commanded  by 
the  Pinzons. 

His  eight  years  of  probation  were  weary  years  of  poverty,  humil 
iation,  and  hope  deferred.  He  was  not  only  derided  as  an  enthusiast, 
almost  as  a  madman,  but  was  in  danger  of  being  denounced  as  a 
heretic  for  devising  theories  in  direct  contradiction  to  the  received 
doctrines  of  the  fathers  as  to  the  shape  and  habitation  of  the  globe. 
He  was  looked  upon  with  cold  suspicion  as  a  foreigner,  and  sneered 
at  as  vainglorious  for  assuming  to  be  wiser  than  many  of  the  learned 
Decision  of  °^  his  own  time,  and  all  those  of  the  past.  The  Council  of 
ofesfia"n°il  Salamanca,  summoned  by  royal  order  to  meet  at  the  convent 
manca.  of  g^  Stephen,  and  listen  to  his  plea,  decided  against  him. 
The  most  reverent  and  powerful  prelates,  fired  with  holy  zeal,  and 
dogged  in  their  hostility  to  new-fangled  and  presumptuous  notions, 
ridiculed  with  great  success  a  project  involving  such  an  absurdity  as 
the  existence  of  the  antipodes,  where  men  walked  with  their  heels 
above  their  heads,  where  the  trees  grew  downward,  where  the  snow 
and  rain  fell  upward  from  a  nether  heaven.  To  maintain  that  the 
earth  was  inhabited  beyond  the  tropics  savored  of  blasphemy.  The 
Bible  taught  that  all  men  are  descended  from  Adam  and  Eve,  whose 
primal  home  was  on  the  banks  of  the  Shat-el-Arab,  north  of  the 
Persian  Gulf ;  and  as  the  torrid  zone  was  impassable,  to  assume  that 
there  were  human  beings  beyond  that  line  was  to  assume  that  there 
were  races  of  men  who  did  not  descend  from  Adam  and  Eve. 

Moreover,  it  was  denied  by  these  bigots  that  the  earth  was  a  globe, 
for  the  Scriptures  and  the  fathers  taught  that  it  was  a  level,  extended 
plain,  whose  extremity  could  only  be  reached,  if  it  could  be  reached  at 
all,  by  a  voyage  of  several  years.  But  if  the  world  was  a  globe,  then, 
they  triumphantly  asserted,  such  a  voyage  as  this  ignorant  enthusiast 
proposed  would  be  absolutely  impossible  ;  for  either  one  way  or  the 
other,  in  going  or  returning,  the  sailing  would  be  all  up-hill.  There 
were,  indeed,  men  in  that  grave  assembly  too  enlightened  not  to  detect 


QUEEN  ISABELLA'S  DECISION. 


109 


the  fallacies  and  absurdities  involved  in  such  statements,  and  to 
wonder  at  the  ignorance  that  could  believe  in  them ;  others  there 
were  ready  with  facts  of  navigation  and  geography,  few  as  they  were 
in  that  age,  to  show  that,  whether  Columbus  were  right  or  wrong, 
such  objections  to  his  theories  were  more  baseless  than  his  wildest 
dreams.  And  there  were  some,  perhaps,  who  thought,  if  they  did  not 
say  so,  that  the  laws  of  the  universe 
could  not  be  limited  to  texts  of  Scrip 
ture,  or  assertions  sanctified  by  noth 
ing  but  priestly  authority.  It  was  a 
gain,  nevertheless,  to  get  the  subject 
before  so  august  a  body  as  this  Coun 
cil  of  Salamanca,  and  the  eloquence 
which  Columbus  brought  to  its  dis 
cussion,  the  special  scientific  facts  of 
which  he  showed  himself  the  master, 
the  skill  with  which  he  parried  at 
tack,  and  the  sagacity  with  which  he 
avoided  the  pitfalls  and  ambushes 
with  which  the  wily  monks  beset  his 
path,  made  him  new  friends  and 
strengthened  his  old  ones.  lsabella'  Queen  of  Castile< 

Doubtful  of  success  in  Spain,  he  at  one  time  sent  his  brother  Bar 
tholomew  to  England  to  open  negotiations,  if  possible,  with  Henry 
VII.  ;  at  another  time  he  entered  into  correspondence  with  Louis  XI. 
of  France.  From  Ferdinand  and  his  counsellors  he  could  get 

,  .  .  ii'i  Application 

only  evasive  answers,  and  wearied  out  at  length  with  pro-  to  England 
crastination,  and  negotiations  that  came  to  nothing,  he  bade 
farewell  to  his  friends  and  started   for  France  and  England.      But 
among   those   who  sincerely  believed  in   him  and   his    project  was 
Luis  de  Santangel,  receiver  of  the  ecclesiastical  revenues  of  Aragon, 
who,  on  hearing  that  Columbus  had  actually  started  to  leave  the  coun 
try,  hastened  to  the  queen  and  begged  her  to  recall  him.     His  entrea 
ties  and  representations,  seconded  by  those  of  Alonzo  de  Quintanilla, 
the  Minister  of  Finance,  who  happened  to  be  present,  prevailed  with 
Isabella.     They  convinced  her  that  the  loss  and  the  shame  to  Spain 
would  be  great  and  irreparable  if  such  an  opportunity  to  add  to  her 
dominion  and  wealth,  by  the  discovery   of   a  short  passage  to  India, 
should  fall   into  the  hands  of    any  other  power.     A  messenger  was 
immediately  dispatched  to  bring  Columbus  back,  the  queen  Queen  Iga. 
declaring  that  the  enterprise  should  now  be  her  own,  and  ^tne60^68 
that  she  would  pawn  the  royal  jewels  to  defray  its  expenses.  enterPrise- 
This   generous  sacrifice  on  her  part,  however,  was  rendered  unneces- 


110 


INDIA  — THE  EL  DORADO   OF   COLUMBUS.       [CHAP.  V. 


sary  by  Santangel,  who  took  it  upon  himself  to  advance  the  requisite 
sum.  On  the  arrival  of  Columbus,  negotiation  was  resumed,  and  an 
agreement  was  at  length  drawn  up  between  Ferdinand  and  Isabella 
and  himself  by  which  he  was  made  admiral  and  viceroy  of  all  the  seas 
and  lands  he  should  discover  ;  a  tenth  part  of  all  the  revenues  to  be 
derived  from  them  was  to  be  his  ;  and  he  was  to  provide  an  eighth 
part  of  the  expenses.  Armed  with  such  authority,  he  repaired  to 
Palos  to  make  arrangements  for  the  voyage. 

The  agreement  was  signed  in  April  or  May,  1492,  and  on  the  third 

of  the  following  August  he  sailed  from  Palos  in  command 

turefrom       of  an  expedition  consisting  of  three  vessels  and  one  hundred 

and  twenty  men.     The  largest  ship,  the  Santa  Maria,  on 

which  flew  the  admiral's  pennant,  was  probably  not  more  than  one 

hundred  tons'  burden  ;  the 
other  two,  the  Pinta  and  the 
Nina,  commanded  respective 
ly  by  his  friends  Martin 
Alonzo  Pinzon  and  Vincente 
Yanez  Pinzon,  of  Palos,  were 
still  smaller  vessels,  called 
caravels,  with  no  decks  amid 
ships,  but  built  high  out  of 
the  water  at  the  stem  and 
stern. 

But  not  only  were  his  ves 
sels  small;  they  were  hardly 
seaworthy,  and  one  of  them, 
the  Pinta,  unshipped  her 
rudder  before  they  reached 
the  Canaries.  It  is  conjec 
tured,  indeed,  that  this  was 
not  accidental,  but  was  con 
trived  by  the  owners  of  the  vessel  before  she  left  port,  they  not  liking 
the  adventure  on  which  they  were  compelled  to  send  her.  The  ad 
miral,  however,  had  great  difficulty  in  getting  any  vessels  at  all, 
so  intense  was  the  feeling  in  Palos  against  the  enterprise.  The  royal 
mandate ;  the  promise  of  immunity  from  civil  or  criminal  process 
against  any  person  who  would  enlist  in  it ;  the  example  of  the  Pin- 
zons,  the  most  respectable  and  experienced  mariners  of  the  port ;  and 
the  priestly  influence  of  Juan  Perez,  the  prior  of  Rabida,  were  means 
and  influences  all  needed  and  all  used  to  procure  crews.  When  the 
expedition  sailed,  it  was  followed  by  prayers  and  tears  and  lamenta 
tions  for  men  most  of  whom  were  constrained  by  authority  or  ne- 


The   Fleet  of  Columbus. 


THE  FIRST  EXPEDITION.  Ill 

eessity  to  enter  upon  an  adventure  which  seemed  desperate  to  the  last 
degree. 

The  sum  advanced  from  the  treasury  of  Aragon  by  Santangel  was 
one  million  one  hundred  and  forty  thousand  maravedis, 
"  being  the  sum  he  lent,"  says  the  account-book,  "  for  pay-  the^xpedi- 
ing  the  caravels  which  their  highnesses  ordered  to  go  as  the 
armada  to  the  Indies,  and  for  paying  Christopher  Columbus,  who  goes 
in  the  said  armada."  1  If  to  this  be  added  the  one  eighth  share  of  the 
expenses  which  it  was  stipulated  Columbus  himself  should  provide, 
the  whole  cost  of  the  expedition  was  one  million  two  hundred  and 
eighty-two  thousand  and  five  hundred  maravedis,  a  sum  hardly  equal 
in  its  purchasing  power  to  fifty  thousand  dollars  of  the  money  of  our 
time.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  the  expense  of  the  expedition  must 
always  have  been  a  secondary  consideration  with  the  sovereigns  from 
whom  Columbus  had  sought  assistance.  The  real  difficulty  was  not 
money,  but  the  serious  doubts  as  to  the  soundness  of  his  theory  of 
the  possibility  of  a  western  voyage  to  India.  It  was  those  doubts, 
intensified  into  absolute  terror,  that  filled  Palos  with  wailing  and 
consternation  when  he  succeeded,  at  last,  in  making  good  his  de 
parture. 

Seven  months  later  he  entered  the  same  port  with  the  halo  of  the 
most  brilliant  success  about  him,  and  prepared  to  proceed  to  court 
surrounded  with  the  barbaric  pomp  of  painted  savages  decked  out 
with  ornaments  of  gold,  and  crowned  with  coronets  of  brilliant  feath 
ers,  attendants  carrying  in  their  hands  birds  of  the  gayest  plumage, 
the  stuffed  skins  of  strange  beasts,  and  specimens  of  trees  and  plants 
supposed  to  bear  the  most  precious  spices.  No  wonder  that  then  the 
revulsion  of  feeling  was  tremendous,  and  he  was  hailed  as  the  greatest 
and  most  fortunate  of  men.  It  was  a  short-lived  triumph,  however, 
never  to  be  repeated  on  his  return  from  either  of  his  three  subsequent 
voyages,  for  his  was  a  success  that  had  not  succeeded. 

The  glory  of  the  discovery  he  actually  made  has  to  a  remarkable 
degree  obscured  the  fact  that  in  the  loner  discussion  before 

The  mistake 

kings  and  councils  of  the  discovery  he  proposed  to  make,  it  of  the  great 

navigator. 

was  Columbus  who  was  in  the  wrong,  and  his  opponents  who 
were  in  the  right,  on  the  main  question  —  a  short  western  route  to 
India.  The  ignorance,  the  obstinacy,  the  stupidity,  with  which  he  so 
long  contended,  were  indeed  obstacles  in  the  way  of  an  event  so  im 
portant  to  all  civilized  races  as  the  possession  of  half  the  globe ;  but 
that  event  was  no  more  proposed  or  foreseen  by  Columbus  than 
it  was  opposed  by  those  who  withstood  him  the  most  persistently. 
or  ridiculed  him  the  most  unmercifully.  The  very  splendor  of  his 

i  Helps'  Life  of  Columbus,  p.  80. 


112  INDIA  — THE  EL  DORADO   OF   COLUMBUS.      [CHAP.  V. 

promises  may  have  made  men  incredulous  of  their  fulfilment  who 
would,  perhaps,  have  listened  to  an  argument  in  favor  merely  of 
the  possibility  of  sailing  westward  and  of  reaching  unknown  countries, 
within  a  moderate  distance,  which  might  be  worth  exploring  and 
worth  possessing.  But  Columbus  had  no  such  argument  to  offer. 
Neither  in  his  mind  nor  in  theirs  was  there  any  thought  of  a  great 
continent  lying  between  two  great  oceans,  extending  almost  from 
pole  to  pole,  and  separating  the  western  coast  of  Europe  from  the 
eastern  coast  of  Asia  by  an  area  of  land  and  sea  that  covered  half 
the  globe.  It  was  that  distant  Asia  itself  that  he  declared  he  could 
reach  in  less  than  forty  days  ;  and  that  they  rightly  said  was  im 
possible. 

But  at  last,  as  he  believed,  and  as  they  were  forced  to  confess,  by 
an  event  which  all  misapprehended,  he  was  justified.  The  enthu 
siasm,  the  strength  of  faith,  the  tenacity  of  purpose,  which  through 
so  many  years  had  never  faltered,  had  at  length  triumphed  —  tri 
umphed  even  in  the  final  struggle  with  the  superstition  and  despera 
tion  of  men  who  would  have  gladly  sacrificed  him  to  their  fears. 
They  had  crossed  the  ocean  hitherto  believed  to  be  guarded  by  strange 

and  horrid  monsters  and  shrouded  in  frightful  darkness  ;  but 
the  New  as  they  approached  the  land  of  the  Western  Hemisphere  a 

new  terror  seized  them.  They  fancied  themselves  lured  by 
the  powers  of  magic  to  certain  destruction,  gliding  over  smooth 
waters,  favored  by  gentle  breezes,  beguiled  by  birds  of  gay  plumage 
whose  song  was  of  the  woods ;  by  fishes  of  flashing  hues  whose 
natural  haunts  were  the  dark  and  still  crevices  of  rocky  shores ;  by 
fantastic  clouds  that  took  the  semblance  of  distant  mountains  or  of 
low  beaches,  making  a  dim  line  upon  the  edge  of  sky  and  sea,  but 
fading  into  nothingness  as  they  were  approached  ;  by  the  exquisite 
perfume  of  tropical  vegetation,  enwrapping  all  the  senses,  while 
around  them  were  to  be  seen  only  the  desolate  waters,  above  them 
only  the  cruel  sky.  But  the  presence  of  the  man  of  faith  was  stronger 
than  the  dread  of  the  supernatural.  He  never  faltered  for  a  single 
instant ;  not  one  passing  mist  of  doubt  ever  clouded  his  mind.  He 
knew  that  God  had  led  him  to  the  threshold  of  the  dominions  of 
Kublai  Khan;  and  when  at  daybreak  on  the  12th  of  October  the 
morning  light  revealed  the  beautiful  earth,  never  so  hailed  since  the 
top  of  Ararat  pierced  the  waters  of  a  drowned  world,  —  at  that  su 
preme  moment  he  in  his  sublime  faith  saw  the  realization  of  the 
visions  of  a  life-time.  Before  him  rose  all  the  splendor  and  opulence 
of  the  thousands  of  cities  and  palaces,  the  fleets  of  unnumbered  ships 
laden  with  richest  merchandise,  the  mountains  of  precious  stones,  the 
lakes  of  pearls,  the  rivers  of  gold,  of  the  kingdoms  of  Mangi  and 


MISTAKE   OF  THE   GREAT  NAVIGATOR.  113 

Cathay ;  these  for  his  temporal  sovereigns,  the  King  and  Queen  of 
Spain  :  and  before  him  gathered  millions  of  his  fellow-creatures,  to 
whose  perishing  souls  he,  the  "  Christ-bearer,"  came  as  the  messenger 
of  the  glad  tidings  of  salvation,  to  lead  them  to  the  feet  of  his  spiritual 
lord,  the  Holy  Father  at  Rome. 

And  from  that  moment  to  the  day  of  his  death  hardly  a  doubt 
seems  ever  to  have  cast  a  shadow  over  his  belief.  When  he  asked  of 
the  natives  of  Guanahani — the  island  he  first  saw,  and  The  new  con- 
appropriately  named  Salvador,  or  the  Saviour  —  for  Cipango,  pose^toTe 
or  Japan,  they,  supposing  him  to  mean  those  mountains  of  Asia> 
Haiti  called  Cibao,  pointed  southward ;  and  no  suspicion  crossed  the 
mind  of  Columbus  that  there  could  be  any  misunderstanding  either 
on  his  part  or  on  theirs.  From  the  ears  and  noses  of  these  savages 
were  suspended  rude  ornaments  of  gold ;  on  these  he  fancied  he  could 
distinguish  engraved  characters,  and  that  they  were  the  coin  of  India. 
As  he  continued  his  voyage  among  other  islands,  the  answer  to  the 
constant  inquiry  for  gold  was  always  the  same  ;  the  Indians  pointed  to 
the  south,  and  the  fervid  imagination  of  the  Admiral  led  him  to 
interpret  their  gestures  as  meaning  that  southward  were  kingdoms 
populous,  powerful,  rich  in  all  precious  things  —  the  marvellous  country 
of  Marco  Polo's  narrative.  When  he  reached  the  coast  of  Cuba,  the 
Indians,  pointing  to  the  interior,  contrived  to  impart  the  information 
that  at  a  distance  of  four  days'  journey  only  was  Cubanacan,  where 
gold  abounded  ;  he  recognized  in  that  word  —  Cubanacan  —  a  corrup 
tion  of  the  name  of  that  magnificent  monarch  of  whom  he  was  in 
search,  Kublai  Khan  ;  and  supposing  he  had  reached  the  island  of 
Cipango,  he  dispatched  two  messengers  overland,  to  deliver  to  him 
the  letter  of  which  he  was  the  bearer  as  ambassador  from  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella. 

So  of  all  his  voyages.  Wherever  he  went,  whatever  he  saw  or 
heard,  it  only  served  to  deepen  this  delusion.  When  he  sailed  west 
from  Jamaica,  he  thought  he  had  accomplished  so  much  of  The  delusion 
the  compass  of  the  earth  that  he  must  needs  be  near  the  c 
Aurea  Chersonesus  of  ancient  India.  Hispaniola  he  was  sure  was 
Ophir,  and  in  deep  pits  in  the  mountains  he  saw  evidences  of  the 
ancient  mines  whence  Solomon  derived  his  gold.  The  extremity  of 
Cuba  he  assumed  to  be  the  extremity  of  Asia,  by  doubling  which  he 
could  sail  along  the  known  coasts  of  India,  and  reach  at  length  the 
Red  Sea,  where,  if  he  pleased,  he  could  leave  his  own  ships,  cross  the 
continent  to  the  Mediterranean,  and  return  to  Spain,  having  circum 
navigated  the  world.  But  there  was  method  in  this  madness,  for 
yielding  on  that  occasion  to  the  representations  of  his  companions,  that 
the  condition  of  his  ships  would  not  admit  of  so  extended  a  voyage,  he 


114  INDIA  — THE   EL   DORADO   OF   COLUMBUS.       [CHAP.  V. 

required  an  affidavit  from  all  persons  on  board  his  fleet  that  they  be 
lieved  the  coast  of  Cuba,  along  which  they  had  sailed,  was  the  coast  of 
Asia.  His  own  belief  needed  no  confirmation,  but  he  was  gratified  to 
hear  that  a  neighboring  province  was  called  Mangon,  and  that  its 
people  had  tails ;  for  he  remembered  that  Sir  John  Mandeville  had 
described  a  tribe  of  men  of  that  kind  in  the  East,  and  he  was  quite 
certain,  therefore,  that  he  was  within  a  few  days'  travel  of  the  king 
dom  of  Mangi. 

He  changed  his  mind  in  regard  to  places  as  he  visited  different 
regions,  but  he  never  ceased  to  affirm  his  conviction  that  he  was  on 
the  very  eve  of  the  fulfilment  of  all  his  hopes.  Ten  years  of  observa 
tion  and  reflection  upon  the  character  of  his  discoveries  moved  him 
not  in  the  least  to  any  correction  of  this  singular  credulity.  Even  on 
his  fourth  and  last  voyage  he  wrote  to  the  king  and  queen  that  on  the 
coast  of  Veragua  he  had  reached  Mangi,  "  contiguous  to  Cathay  ;  " 
nineteen  days  of  land  travel,  he  is  confident,  would  take  him  to  the 
river  Ganges  ;  the  mines  of  Aurea,  whence,  according  to  Josephus,  he 
reminds  them,  came  the  vast  wealth  of  David  and  of  Solomon,  spoken 
of  in  Chronicles  and  the  Book  of  Kings,  were,  he  was  now  sure,  iden 
tical  with  the  mines  of  Veragua  ;  "in  the  name  of  God  "  he  pledged 
himself  in  the  same  letter  to  conduct  any  one,  who  would  undertake 
the  mission,  to  the  Emperor  of  Cathay,  to  instruct  him  in  the  faith  of 
Christ,  as  the  Abbe  Joaquim  said  would  be  done  by  some  one  who 
came  from  Spain.1  And  finally  from  his  death-bed  he  wrote  to  the 
new  sovereigns,  Philip  and  Juana,  that  he  would  yet  do  them 

The  last  .  &      '          .    *\.   t    r.    j  i  J    •       i  • 

letter  of        services  the  like  of  which  had  never  been  seen ;  and  in  his 

Columbus.        .  'iii  •  i         T 

last  solemn  will  and  testament  he  said,  "  In  the  name  of  the 
Most  Holy  Trinity,  who  inspired  me  with  the  idea,  and  afterwards 
made  it  perfectly  clear  to  me  that  I  could  navigate  and  go  to  the 

Indies  from  Spain,  by  traversing  the  ocean  westwardly And  it 

pleased  the  Lord  Almighty,  that  in  the  year  one  thousand  four  hun 
dred  and  ninety-two  I  should  discover  the  continent  of  the  Indies  and 
many  islands,  among  them  Hispaniola,  which  the  Indians  call  Ayte, 
and  the  Monicongos,  Cipango." 

When  the  successful  discoverer  returned  to  Spain  from  his  first  voy 
age,  his  reception  was  a  triumph  such  as  never  waited  upon  any  con- 
His  trium-  <lueror-  The  people  from  city  and  town,  from  village  and 
fohs1painum  coun*ry-side,  crowded  streets  and  highways  as  he  travelled 

from  Palos  to  Barcelona,  to  do  homage  to  the  man  who  had 
given  India  to  Spain.  At  Barcelona  the  king  and  queen  received  him 
sitting  on  their  thrones  under  a  canopy  in  the  open  air,  and  hesitated 

1  Letter  on  the  Fourth  Voyage,  iu  Select  Letters  of  Columbus,  edited  by  R.  H.  Major 
Hakluyt  Soc.  Pub. 


TRIUMPHAL  RETURN  TO  SPAIN. 


115 


when  he  approached  to  accept  the  customary  mark  of  homage  due 
from  a  subject  to  a  sovereign.  In  Portugal,  where  before  this  arrival 
in  Spain  he  was  compelled  by  stress  of  weather  to  seek  a  haven,  he 
was  met  with  the  most  bitter  exasperation  that  he  should  have  suc- 


Reception  by   Sovereigns. 

ceeded  in  snatching  from  that  kingdom  the  glory  and  power  and  riches 
her  kings  and  princes  had  so  long  sought  in  the  possession  of  that  East 
which  he  by  the  boldness  of  his  genius  had  found  by  a  few  days' 
westward  sailing.  Some  of  the  advisers  of  John  II.  even  counselled 
his  assassination,  in  the  hope  that  the  way  to  his  discovery  would 
perish  with  him. 


116  INDIA— THE   EL   DORADO    OF  COLUMBUS.       [CHAP.  V. 

But  the  rage  of  the  Portuguese  and  the  admiration  of  the  Spaniards 
were  alike  blind.  Had  it  been  known  that  the  tidings  he  brought 
were  of  an  unknown  world,  peopled,  apparently,  by  naked  savages 
only ;  that  his  theory  as  to  the  dimensions  and  divisions  of  the  earth 
was  proved  to  be  a  mistake  ;  that  the  only  feasible  road  to  India  was 
that  which  the  Portuguese  had  so  long  sought,  round  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope  ;  then  he  might  indeed  have  aroused  some  languid  curios 
ity  for  what  he  had  done,  but,  still  more,  bitter  ridicule  and  disap 
pointment  for  his  failure  to  fulfil  the  magnificent  promise  with  which 
for  nearly  twenty  years  he  had  wearied  almost  every  court  in  Europe 
that  could  command  a  ship.  The  Bahama  Islands  and  The  Great 
Antilles,  whatever  their  discovery  might  lead  to  in  the  time  to  come, 
were  a  poor  recompense  for  Mangi  and  Cathay.  But  he  returned  the 
herald,  as  it  was  supposed,  of  a  splendor  and  prosperity  to  Spain  un 
paralleled  in  history  ;  of  new  power  and  dominion  to  the  Holy  See, 
and  with  offers  of  sudden  riches  to  whomsoever  would  follow  him  to 
the  empire  of  the  "  King  of  Kings."  The  half -crazy  enthusiast  had 
become  a  signal  benefactor  and  hero  ;  the  utmost  exaltation  of  his 
imagination  had  held  out  no  promise  that  was  not  about  to  be  ful 
filled,  and  the  nation  fell  at  his  feet. 

Though  Columbus  himself  never  knew,  or  never  acknowledged,  that 
he  had  made  a  mistake  ;  though  never  by  a  single  word,  so  far  as 
there  is  any  record,  did  he  anticipate  the  true  cause  of  the  undying 
fame  that  should  wait  upon  his  name,  others  saw  when  he  returned 
from  his  second  voyage  only  the  dispelling  of  a  gorgeous  vision.  The 
hidalgos  who  had  thronged  about  him  for  that  expedition,  clamor 
ing  to  be  led  to  the  possession  of  the  East,  found,  not  an  empire 
filled  with  magnificent  cities,  their  ports  crowded  with  ships  by  thou 
sands  busy  with  the  commerce  of  a  third  of  the  world  ;  not  temples 
roofed  with  gold,  resting  on  golden  pillars,  cunningly  wrought  and 
colored  ;  not  a  people  clothed  in  silks  and  costly  furs,  decked  with 
precious  stones,  leading  lives  of  a  magnificent  luxury  and  ease,  in  cit 
ies  of  palaces  such  as  Europe  never  knew ;  but  only  an  unreclaimed 
wilderness  peopled  by  naked  savages,  where  he  who  would  not  work 
must  starve,  and  where  what  gold  they  heard  of  was  to  be  dug  with 
weary  toil  out  of  the  bowels  of  the  earth.  The  "  pauper  pilot,"  as 
he  was  called  in  the  days  when  he  hung  about  the  court  a  threadbare 
petitioner,  had  indeed  discovered  some  islands  in  a  distant  ocean  ;  but 
his  promises  were  idle  tales,  his  hopes  the  delusions  of  a  morbid  imag 
ination,  his  India  a  figment ;  and  he  himself  now  proved  to  be  a  rank 
impostor,  a  foreign  adventurer  who  had  thrust  himself  into  the  ranks 
of  the  proudest  nobility  in  Europe,  and  abused  a  nation  with  mon- 
strous  lies. 


RESENTMENT   OF   THE    SPANIARDS.  117 

Such  of  these  disappointed  men  as  lived  to  return  filled  the  kingdom 
with  their  clamors.  Seating  themselves  in  the  very  courts  of  the  Al- 
hambra,  holding  up  the  grapes  of  which  they  eat,  and  displaying  the 
rags  which  hardly  covered  them,  they  would  declare  that  they  were 
reduced  to  this  poor  condition  by  their  misfortunes.  They  had  lis 
tened  to  fables  and  been  deceived  by  lies.  When  the  king  came  forth 
they  surrounded  him,  reproaching  him  and  the  admiral  as  the  cause 
of  their  wretched  state,  and  cried  out,  "  Pay  !  pay  !  "  And  if  the  sons 
of  Columbus,  who  were  pages  to  the  queen,  passed  that  way,  "  They 
shouted  to  the  very  heavens,  saying,  '  Look  at  the  sons  of  the  Admiral 
of  Mosquitoland,  of  that  man  who  has  discovered  the  lands  of  deceit 
and  disappointment,  a  place  of  sepulchre  and  wretchedness  to  Spanish 
hidalgos.'  "  ! 

This  reaction  in  feeling  and  opinion  made  it  possible  to  send  him 
home  in  chains  from  his  third  expedition.  The  popular  in-  ffis  failure 
difference  to  the  injustice  and  cruelty  which  pursued  him  to  and  dlssrace- 
the  end  of  his  days,  and  the  bitter  hostility  of  his  many  enemies,  are 
explicable  only  by  the  disappointment  of  those  magnificent  hopes  ex 
cited  by  his  first  discovery,  and  which  he  still  held  out  in  spite  of  the 
stern  facts  which  had  opened  the  eyes  of  everybody  else.  Small  defer 
ence  was  paid  to  the  authority  of  one  who  was  looked  upon,  at  best,  as 
a  half-crazed  enthusiast,  and  the  haughty  Spaniards  resented  it  as  an 
insult  that  any  power  should  still  rest  in  the  hands,  or  any  confidence 
be  placed  in  the  word,  of  one  whom  they  thought  rather  deserving  of 
punishment  as  an  impostor  than  of  reward  as  a  benefactor.  He  had 
promised  power,  dominion,  riches  ;  a  short  passage  to  Cathay  ;  the  con 
quest  of  the  East :  a  savage  island  or  two  in  the  Western  seas  was  as 
yet  the  only  fulfilment  of  that  promise.  What  else  it  was  to  be  he 
never  knew.  Not  till  he  was  dead  did  the  world  begin  to  understand 
that  he  had  found  a  New  World. 

i  The  History  of  the  Life  and  Actions  of  Admiral  Christopher  Colon,  etc.  By  his  son, 
Don  Ferdinand  Colon. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

COLUMBUS,   VESPUCCI,   AND   THE   CABOTS. 

THIRD  VOYAGE  OF  COLUMBUS.  —  His  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  MAIN  LAND.  —  THE  VOY. 
AGE  OF  AMERIGO  VESPUCCI.  —  FIRST  PRINTED  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  NEW  WORLD. — 
PUBLICATIONS  OF  ST.  DIE  COLLEGE.  —  THE  PRINTER-MONKS,  WALDSEEMULLER 
AND  RlNGMANN. EXPEDITION  OF  THE  CABOTS  FROM  ENGLAND.  NORTH  AMER 
ICA  DISCOVERED- MAP  OF  SEBASTIAN  CABOT. JOHN  CABOl's  PATENTS  FROM 

HENRY  VII.  —  FIRST  ENGLISH  COLONY   SENT   TO  THE  NEW  WORLD.  —  SEBASTIAN 
CABOT  SAILS  DOWN  THE  AMERICAN  COAST. 

ON  the  30th  of  May,  1498,  Columbus  sailed  from  the  port  of  San 
Lucar,  in  Spain,  on  his  third  voyage.  His  special  purpose  this  time 
was  to  search  for  a  country  which  he  believed  lay  south  of  those  lands 
he  had  previously  discovered.  On  the  31st  of  July  following,  when 
he  was  about  to  abandon  his  southerly  course  in  despair  and  turn 
northward  for  the  Carribee  Islands,  one  of  his  sailors  saw  from  the 
masthead  a  range  of  three  mountains.  Giving  many  thanks  to  God 
for  his  mercy,  for  the  supply  of  water  was  failing,  the  provision  of  corn 
and  wine  and  meat  was  well-nigh  exhausted,  and  the  crews  of  the 
three  vessels  were  in  sore  distress  from  exposure  to  the  heat  of  the 
tropics,  the  admiral  made  for  the  land,  which  proved  to  be  an  island. 
To  this  he  gave  the  name  it  still  bears  of  Trinidad,  in  honor  of  the 
Holy  Trinity,  and  also,  perhaps,  because  of  the  three  mountains  which 
were  first  seen. 

Running  along  the  coast,  he  soon  saw,  as  he  supposed,  another 
Columbus  island,  at  the  south,  but  which  was  the  low  land  of  the  delta 
fhfmaTntnd  of  the  great  River  Orinoco.  Entering  the  Gulf  of  Paria,  he 
tte"orinoc°of.  sailed  along  for  days  with  Trinidad  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
coast  of  the  .continent  on  the  other,  delighted  with  the 
beauty  and  verdure  of  the  country  and  with  the  blandness  of  the  cli 
mate,  and  astonished  at  the  freshness  and  volume  of  the  water  which, 
with  an  "  awful  roaring,"  met  and  struggled  with  the  sea.  The  in 
nermost  part  of  the  gulf,  to  which  he  penetrated,  he  called  the  Gulf 
of  Pearls,  and  into  this  poured  the  rivers  whose  waters,  he  believed, 
came  from  the  earthly  Paradise.1 

1  Letters  of  Columbus,  translated  by  R.  H.  Major,  and  published  by  the  Hakluyt  Society 
Third  Voyage. 


1498.] 


THIRD  VOYAGE  OF  COLUMBUS. 


119 


For,  according  to  his  theory  of  the  globe,  the  two  hemispheres  were 
not  round  alike,  but  the  Eastern  was  shaped  like  the  breast  The  earthly 
of  a  woman,  or  the  half  of  a  round  pear  with  a  raised  pro-  Paradtee- 
jection  at  its  stalk  ;  and  on  this  prominence,  the  spot  highest  and 
nearest  the  sky  and  under  the  equinoctial  line,  was  the  garden 
wherein  God  had  planted  Adam.  He  did  not  suppose  it  possible  that 
mortal  man  could  ever  reach  that  blessed  region ;  but  as  he  had  sailed 
westward,  after  passing  a  meridian  line  a  hundred  miles  west  of  the 
Azores,  he  had  noted  that  the  North  Star  rose  gradually  higher  in  the 
heavens,  the  needle  shifted  from  northeast  to  northwest,  the  heat, 
hitherto  so  intolerable  that  he  thought  they  "  should  have  been 


Columbus  entering  the  Orinoco. 

burnt,"  became  more  and  more  moderate,  the  air  daily  more  refresh 
ing  and  delightful,  and  he  was  persuaded  that  he  was  approaching  the 
highest  part  of  the  globe.  As  he  sailed  westward  his  ships  "  had 
risen  smoothly  toward  the  sky,"  till  he  had  come,  at  length,  to  this 
pleasant  land  "  as  fresh  and  green  and  beautiful  as  the  gardens  of  Va 
lencia  in  April,"  —  to  this  mighty  rush  of  sweet  waters  that  filled  the 
Gulf  of  Pearls  and  flowed  far  out  to  sea,  coming  as  "  on  his  soul "  he 
believed  from  the  Garden  of  Eden.1 

1  Irving  (Life  of  Columbus,  book  x.,  chap,  iii.)  says  that  Columbus  still  supposed  Paria 
to  be  an  island,  even  after  he  had  left  the  gulf  and  sailed  westward  along  the  outer  coast. 
But  Columbus  himself,  in  his  letter  to  the  King  and  Queen,  makes  a  distinction  between 
the  main  land  and  Trinidad,  in  speaking  of  the  one  as  an  island  and  the  other  as  the  land 
of  Gracia.  Nor  is  it  probable  that  he  supposed  the  earthly  paradise  to  be  on  an  island,  or 
that  such  a  volume  of  water  —  of  which  he  doubted  if  "there  is  any  river  in  the  world  so 
large  and  so  deep  "  —  could  have  its  course  from  the  "  nipple  "  of  the  globe  except  over  a 
continent.  Charlevoix  (History  of  New  France,  Shea's  translation,  vol.  i.,  p.  21)  says: 


120  COLUMBUS,  VESPUCCI,  AND   THE   CABOTS.     [CHAP.  VI. 

It  was  hard  no  doubt,  to  turn  away  from  this  celestial  land,  even 
to  go  back  to  Spain  and  relate  in  person  to  his  sovereigns  the  mar 
vellous  things  he  had  discovered,  and  the  approach  he  had  made  to 
the  topmost  pinnacle  of  the  globe ;  harder  still  to  thrust  away  from 

him  considerations  so  sublime  and  so  congenial  to  his  pro- 
Ithiiis°pani>-  foundly  religious  nature,  to  attend  to  the  vulgar  affairs  of  a 

turbulent  colony,  where,  as  he  afterward  wrote,  "  there  were 
few  men  who  were  not  vagabonds,  and  there  were  none  who  had 
either  wife  or  children."  l 

But  in  his  absence  rebellion  and  anarchy  in  Hispaniola  had  reached 
a  point  beyond  his  control,  and  when  he  appealed  to  his  sovereigns  for 


Columbus  in   Chains. 

a  judge  to  decide  between  him  and  these  turbulent  Spaniards,  who  set 
all  law,  whether  human  or  divine,  at  defiance,  the  court  sent,  not  a 
judge,  but  an  executioner.  His  enemies  had  at  length  so  far  pre 
vailed  against  him  that  Bobadilla,  who  came  professedly  to  look  into 
these  troubles,  dared  to  usurp  the  government  of  the  colony, 

Brutal  con-  .    '         .  .  r  ,  .    .  J .' 

duct  of  to  take  up  his  residence  in  the  house  ot  Columbus,  seizing  all 
it  contained,  both  of  public  and  private  property  and  public 
and  private  papers,  and  the  moment  the  admiral  came  within  his 
reach,  to  arrest  and  send  him  in  chains  on  board  ship  for  transporta 
tion  to  Spain  as  a  felon.  When  Andreas  Martin,  the  master  of  the 
caravel,  moved  to  pity  at  the  sight  of  so  monstrous  and  cruel  an  in- 

"  On  the  llth  he  had  seen  another  land  which  also  he,  at  first,  took  to  be  an  island  and 
styled  Isla  Santa,  hut  he  soon  found  it  to  be  the  continent." 

1  "  Letter  of  Columbus  to  Dona  Juana  de  la  Torres,"  in  Select  Letters,  edited  by  R.  H. 
Major. 


1499.]  VOYAGE  OF  ALONZO  DE   OJEDA.  121 

dignity,  offered  to  strike  these  fetters  from  the  limbs  of  his  distin 
guished  prisoner,  Columbus  refused,  with  the  words,  says  his  son 
Ferdinand,  "  that  since  their  Catholic  Majesties,  by  their  letter  di 
rected  him  to  perform  whatsoever  Bobadilla  did  in  their  name  com 
mand  him  to  do,  in  virtue  of  which  authority  and  commission  he  had 
put  him  in  irons,  he  would  have  none  but  their  Highnesses  them 
selves  do  their  pleasure  herein  ;  and  he  was  resolved  to  keep  those 
fetters  as  relics,  and  a  memorial  of  the  reward  of  his  many  services."  l 
Some  atonement  was  attempted  for  this  outrage  in  the  reception  given 
him  by  Ferdinand  and  Isabella.  He  nevertheless  hung  up  the  chains 
on  the  wall  of  his  chamber,  only  to  be  taken  down  when,  six  years 
later,  they  were  laid  with  him  in  his  coffin. 

Some  months  before  his  return  to  Spain  he  had  sent  home  a  report 
of  the  results  of  his  voyage,  the  continent  he  had  found,  which  he  sup 
posed  to  be  the  extremity  of  the  Indies,  its  wonderful  climate,  its 
great  rivers,  and  its  strange  and  attractive  people.  The  excitement 
which  such  news  must  have  aroused  in  every  port  of  Spain  was,  no 
doubt,  intense,  and  landsmen,  as  well  as  sailors,  burned  to  be  off  to 
this  land  where  the  natives  hung  breastplates  of  gold  upon  their  naked 
bodies  and  wound  great  strings  of  pearls  about  their  heads  and  necks. 
"Now  there  is  not  a  man,"  says  Columbus,  in  one  of  his  letters, — 
reminding  his  sovereigns  that  he  waited  seven  years  at  the  royal  court 
and  was  only  treated  with  ridicule,  —  "  Now  there  is  not  a  man,  down 
to  the  very  tailors,  who  does  not  beg  to  be  allowed  to  become  a  dis 
coverer." 

At  Seville  an  intrepid  and  experienced  navigator,  Alonzo  de  Ojeda, 
who  was  with  Columbus   on  his  first  voyage,  and  knew,  Voyageof 
therefore,  the  way  to  the  Indies  of  the  West,  proposed  at  ojeda°daia 
once  a  private  expedition.     Some  merchants  of  Seville  sup-  ™> 1499- 
plied  the  means,  and  his  patron,  the  Bishop  of  Fonseca,  superintendent 
of  Indian  affairs,  and  the  most  bitter  and  persistent  enemy  of  Colum 
bus,  gave  him  license  for  the  voyage,  and  treacherously  procured  for 
him  the  charts  which  the  great  navigator  had  sent  home,  notwith 
standing  the  royal  order  that   none   should  go  without  permission 
within  fifty  leagues  of   the  lands  he  had  last  discovered.2      Ojeda 
sailed  from  Port  St.  Mary  on  the  20th  of  May,  1499,  and  with  him 
went  Amerigo  Vespucci,  a  native  of  Florence,  but  then  re-  Amerigo 
siding  in  Seville  as  the  agent  of  a  commercial  house.     This 
Vespucci  had  assisted  in  the  fitting  out  of  other  expeditions ;  he  knew 

1  The  Life   of  the  Admiral,  by  his  son,  Don  Ferdinand  Colon.      Pinkerton's   Voyages, 
vol.  xii.,  p.  121. 

2  History  of  the  New  World.     Girolamo  Benzoni.     Published  by  the  Hakluyt  Society, 
p.  37.     Herrera,  Decade  I.,  book  iv.,  chap.  i. 


122 


COLUMBUS,  VESPUCCI,  AND   THE   CABOTS.     [CHAP.  VI 


Portrait  of  Vespucci. 


Columbus  and  had  doubtless  talked  with  him  of  the  Sphere  and  the 
Antipodes,  of  the  New  Indies  and  the  Far  Cathay,  of  the  natives 

sometimes  tractable  as  chil 
dren,  sometimes  fierce  as 
tigers  ;  of  the  abundant 
gold  and  precious  stones; 
of  the  odorous  spices ;  of 
the  gorgeous  silks  and  oth 
er  rich  merchandises  to  be 
brought  by  this  new  route 
from  that  wonderful  land. 
He  was  familiar  with  all 
the  strange  and  stirring  in 
cidents  of  voyages  which 
for  the  previous  six  years 
had  been  filling  the  ears  of 
men  with  tales  more  allur 
ing  and  more  wonderful 
than  were  ever  told  by  the 
boldest  inventors  of  East 
ern  fable,  and  he  longed  to  have  a  share  in  the  profit  and  the  glory  of 
these  great  enterprises.  In  Ojeda's  fleet  he  had  command,  if  we  may 
believe  his  own  statement,  of  two  caravels ;  the  expedition,  first 
touching  the  coast  about  two  hundred  leagues  south  of  the  Gulf  of 
Paria,  sailed  thence  leisurely  along  from  point  to  point  till  it  reached 
the  Cape  de  la  Veda,  meeting,  during  the  months  of  its  progress,  with 
various  adventures,  and  the  usual  fortune  which  waited  upon  the 
first  invaders,  received  sometimes  by  the  simple  and  confiding  natives 
as  supernatural  visitants,  sometimes  with  desperate  but  generally 
futile  resistance  when  their  lust  for  slaves,  for  women,  and  for  gold 
had  come  to  be  better  understood. 

This  was,  probably,  the  first  voyage  of  Vespucci  and  his  first  sight 
Vespucci-s  °*  a  continent  which,  partly  by  accident  and  partly  through  a 
theVonti-°f  reckless  disregard  of  truth,  came  afterward  to  bear  his  name. 
nent.  1499.  jf  jt  wag  fas  first  voyage,  he  was  entitled  to  no  special  credit, 
for  he  was  a  subordinate  in  a  fleet  commanded  by  another,  who  guided 
the  expedition  by  the  charts  which  Columbus  had  drawn  of  the  course 
to  Trinidad  and  the  coast  of  Paria  eleven  months  before. 

In  1501,  Vespucci  left  Spain  at  the  invitation  of  the  King  of  Por 
tugal,  and  made  another,  his  second,  voyage  to  the  West. 

Second  Toy-  ° .  '         J     &  1 

ago  of  yes-     sailing  this  time  in  the  service  of  that  king.     He  visited  the 

pucci.    1501  ° 

coast  of  Brazil,  of  which,  however,  he  was  not  the  first  dis 
coverer,  for  in  the  course  of  the  previous  year — 1500  —  three  dif- 


1501.] 


SECOND  VOYAGE  OF  VESPUCCI. 


123 


ferent  expeditions  under  the  guidance  respectively  of  Vicente  Yanez 
Pinzon,  Diego  de  Lepe,  and  Rodrigo  de  Bastidas  had  sailed  from 
Spain  and  made  extensive  explorations  and  important  discoveries 
along  that  coast;  and  a  Portuguese  fleet,  under  Pedro  Alvarez  de 
Cabral,  on  its  way  to  India  round  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  stretched 
so  far  to  the  west  to  avoid  the  calms  of  the  coast  of  Africa  as  to  come 
by  that  chance  in  sight  of  the  opposite  land,  where,  believing  it  to  be 
a  part  of  a  continent,  De  Cabral  landed  and  took  possession  in  the 
name  of  Portugal. 


Vespucci  at  the  Continent.     [From   De   Bry.] 

The  expedition  of  Vespucci,  nevertheless,  was  a  bold  one,  and  made 
important  additions  to  astronomical  science  in  his  observations  of  the 
heavenly  bodies  of  the  Southern  firmament,  especially  of  the  "  South 
ern  Cross,"  and  to  the  knowledge  of  geography  in  his  exploration 
of  the  Southern  continent  and  sea  of  the  Western  Hemisphere. 
After  leaving  Cape  Verde,  he  was  sixty-seven  days  at  sea  before  he 
made  land  again  at  5°  south,  off  Cape  St.  Roque,  on  the  17th  of  Au 
gust.  Thence  he  sailed  down  the  coast,  spending  the  whole  winter  in 
its  exploration,  till  in  the  following  April  he  was  as  far  south  as  the 


124  COLUMBUS,  VESPUCCI,  AND   THE   CABOTS.     [CHAP.  VI. 

fifty-fourth  parallel,  farther  than  any  navigator  had  been  before. 
The  nights  were  fifteen  hours  long  ;  the  weather  tempestuous  and 
foggy  and  very  cold.  The  last  land  he  saw  is  supposed  to  be  the 
island  of  Georgia,  where,  finding  no  harbors,  and  seeing  no  people 
along  its  rugged  shores,  the  little  fleet  turned  to  escape  from  these 
savage  seas,  where  perpetual  winter  and  almost  perpetual  darkness 
seemed  to  reign.  They  reached  Lisbon  again  in  1502. 

Vespucci  wrote  an  account  of  this  voyage  in  a  letter  to  Lorenzo  de 
Pier  Francisco  de  Medici  of  Florence,  which  was  published 

First  printed  '        -i  i~  s\  A         -\r  i  i  •  111 

narrative  of   at  Augsburg  in  1504.     JNo  wonder  that,  as  it  was  probably 

discovery  of  J 

the  main  the  first  printed  narrative  ot  any  discovery  or  the  mam  land 
of  the  new  continent,  it  should  excite  unusual  attention. 
Several  editions  appeared,  in  the  course  of  the  next  four  years,  in 
Latin  and  Italian,  and  among  them  one  at  Strasbourg  in  1505  under 
the  editorship  of  one  Mathias  Ringmann,  a  native  of  Schlestadt,  a 
town  in  the  lower  department  of  the  Rhine,  twenty-five  miles  from 
Strasbourg.  So  earnest  an  admirer  of  Vespucci  was  this  young  stu 
dent,  that  he  appended  to  the  narrative  of  the  voyage  a  letter  and 
some  verses  of  his  own  in  praise  of  the  navigator,  and  he  gave  to  the 
book  the  title  of  "  Americus  Vesputius :  De  Ora  Antarctica  per  Re- 
gem  PortugallicB  pridem  inventa "  (Americus  Vespuccius  :  concern 
ing  a  southern  region  recently  discovered  under  the  King  of  Portu 
gal).  Here  was  the  suggestion  of  a  new  southern  continent  as  distinct 
from  the  northern  continent  of  Asia,  to  which  the  discoveries  hitherto 
mainly  north  of  the  equator  were  supposed  to  belong.1  And  this 
supposition  of  such  a  new  quarter  of  the  globe  gave  rise,  two  years 
afterward,  to  a  name,  all  growing  naturally  enough  out  of  the  enthu 
siasm  of  this  Ringmann  for  Vespucci,  and  communicated  by  him  to 
others. 

In  the  city  of  St.  Die,  not  far  from  Strasbourg,  in  the  province  of 
Lorraine,  was  a  gymnasium  or  college  established  by  Walter  Lud,  the 
secretary  of  the  Duke  of  Lorraine.  In  this  college  was  set  up  one  of 
Coiie  e  those  newly-invented  and  marvellous  machines,  a  printing- 
press'oT  press ;  and  Ringmann  was  appointed  not  merely  the  col- 
st.  Die.  legiate  professor  of  Latin,  but  to  the  important  post  of 
proof-reader.  In  1507,  Lud,  the  Duke's  secretary,  and  the  head,  ap 
parently,  of  this  little  seminary  of  learning,  published  from  the  college 
printing-press  a  pamphlet  of  only  four  leaves  relating  to  a  narrative 
of  four  voyages  to  the  New  World  by  Amerigo  Vespucci ;  this,  it  is 

1  The  term  "  New  World  "  was  often  used  by  the  early  writers,  even  by  Columbus  him 
self,  in  a  vague  way  and  not  at  all  in  the  sense  afterward  attached  to  it  of  a  new  quarter 
of  the  globe ;  nor  was  there  till  long  after  the  deaths  of  Columbus  and  Vespucci  any  den 
nite  determination  that  these  newly  found  lands  were  not  a  part  of  Asia. 


1507.] 


THE  PRINTING-PRESS  OF  ST.  DIE. 


125 


said  by  the  writer,  was  sent  to  the  Duke,  and  he  —  Lud  —  had  caused 
it  to  be  translated  from  the  French,  in  which  it  was  written,  into 
Latin  ;  and,  as  if  in  recognition  of  the  influence  which  Ringmann  had 
exercised  upon  the  subject  among  his  fellows  of  St.  Die",  Lud  imme 
diately  adds :  "  And  the  booksellers  carry  about  a  certain  epigram 
of  our  Philesius  (Ringmann)  in  a  little  book  of  Vespucci's  translated 
from  Italian  into  Latin  by  Giocondi  of  Verona,  the  architect  from 
Venice."  This  refers  to  the  Strasbourg  edition  of  Vespucci's  second 
voyage,  edited  by  Ringmann  two  years  before,  and  to  which  he  at 
tached  his  laudatory  verses.  This  little  book  of  Lud's,  "  Speculi 


Printing  of  Vespucci's   Book. 

orbis   Declaratio,"  etc.,  also  contains  some  Latin  verses,  —  versiculi 
de  incognita  terra,  —  the  last  lines  of  which  are  thus  translated  :  — 

"  But  hold,  enough  !     Of  the  American  race, 
New  found,  the  home,  the  manners  here  yon  trace 
By  our  small  book  set  forth  in  little  space."  1 

The  narrative  itself,  of  Vespucci's  four  voyages,  thus  referred  to 

1  The  original  is :  — 

"  SeO  QU  plura :  situ,  Qtntis  morescp  rqjt? 
&merfci  parua  mole  Ifuellus  ijabet." 

Harrisse's  Bibliotheca  Americana  Vetustissima,  p.  100,  gives  and  translates  the  lines.     The 


126  COLUMBUS,  VESPUCCI,  AND   THE   CABOTS.     [CHAP.  VI 

by  Lud,  was  published  the  same  year,  1507,  in  a  book  called  "  Cos- 
mographiae  Introductio,"  of  which  it  made  about  one  half. 
mograpimK  This  was  the  work  of  Martin  Waldseemiiller,  and  published 
of  waidsee-  under  his  Greco-latinized  name  of  "  Hylacomylus."  He  also 
'  belonged  to  the  St.  Die  college,  where  he  was  a  teacher  of 
geography,  and  his  "  Introductio"  was  printed  on  the  college  printing 
press.  Whether  the  letter  was  sent  to  St.  Die  addressed  to  the  Duke 
of  Lorraine  by  Vespucci ;  or  whether  it  was  procured  through  the 
zeal  of  Ringmann  and  its  address  altered  without  the  knowledge  of 
Vespucci,  are  interesting  questions.  Interesting,  because  the  letter 
falling  by  some  means  into  the  hands  of  Lud  and  Waldseemiiller  — 
Hylacomylus — the  name  of  its  author  came  to  be  imposed  upon  the 
whole  Western  Hemisphere. 

The  same  letter  subsequently  appeared  in  Italian,  addressed  to  an 
The  soderini  ermnent;  citizen  of  Venice,  named  Soderini,  who  is  known 
letter.  £O  have  been  an  early  companion  and  school-fellow  of  Ves 

pucci.  That  it  was  written  originally  to  Soderini,  is  evident  from 
certain  allusions  in  it  to  youthful  days  and  associations  which  could 
not  refer  to  the  Duke  of  Lorraine,  but  were  proper  enough  when  ap 
plied  to  the  Venetian  citizen.  If  Vespucci  himself  had  the  letter 
translated  into  French,  altered  its  address,  and  then  sent  the  copy  to 
Ringmann,  or  Lud,  or  Waldseemiiller,  a  suspicion  is  aroused  that  he 
was  in  collusion  with  them,  either  directly  or  suggestively,  in  the  be 
stowal  upon  him  of  an  honor  that  was  not  rightfully  his.  Such  a 
suspicion  may  be  altogether  unjust;  Vespucci  may  neither  have  sent 
the  letter  to  the  Duke  nor  have  made  any  suggestion  in  regard  to  it ; 
and  perhaps  no  accusation  would  have  ever  been  brought  against  him 
were  there  not  serious  doubts  as  to  the  number  of  voyages  he  assumes 
to  have  made,  whether  they  were  three  or  four ;  as  to  the  year,  1497, 
in  which  he  declares  he  went  upon  the  first  one ;  and  by  a  certain  con 
fusion  in  the  letter  which  might  have  been  intended  to  mislead,  and 
certainly  did  mislead,  whether  intentional  or  not. 

We  do  not  propose  to  enter  into  any  examination  of  a  question 
which  is  one  of  circumstantial  rather  than  positive  evidence,  and  which 
probably  will  never  be  definitively  settled.  Giving  to  Vespucci  the 
benefit  of  the  doubt,  there  is  much  in  the  fortuitous  circumstances  of 
The  men  the  case  to  explain  this  naming  of  a  newly-discovered  country 
America6  by  men  who,  perhaps,  had  never  looked  upon  the  sea,  and 
me-  who  may  have  known  little,  except  in  a  general  way,  of  the 
different  expeditions 'of  the  navigators  of  Spain  and  Portugal,  and  still 
less  of  the  personal  interest  attached  to  their  fortunes  and  their  deeds. 
The  Duke  of  Lorraine  was  a  patron  of  learning ;  the  young  profes- 

little  four-leaved  book,  S/ieculi  orbis,  etc.,  from  which  they  are  taken,  is  iu  the  British 
Museum.  See  also  Major's  Henry  the  Navigator,  p.  383. 


1507.]  THE   NAMING   OF   AMERICA.  127 

sors  of  the  college  under  his  protection  were  ambitious  of  literary  fame 
and  proud  of  their  literary  labors ;  it  would  bring,  no  doubt,  great 
credit  to  St.  Die*  if,  in  a  work  from  its  printing-press,  the  world  should 
be  taught  that  these  wonderful  discoveries  of  the  ten  preceding  years 
were  not,  as  had  been  ignorantly  supposed,  the  outlying  islands  and 
coasts  of  India,  but  of  a  new  and  unknown  continent  which  separated 
Europe  from  Asia.  The  conclusion,  very  likely,  was  jumped  at  —  a 
lucky  guess  of  over-confident  youth,  rather  than  any  superiority  of 
judgment.  Had  these  young  book-makers  lived  in  Cadiz  or  Lisbon, 
instead  of  the  Vosges  mountains,  they  might  have  hesitated  to  pro 
nounce  upon  a  question  which  had  as  yet  hardly  been  raised,  if  it  had 
been  raised  at  all,  among  the  older  cosmographers  and  navigators. 
They  rushed  in  where  even  Columbus  had  not  thought  to  tread,  and 
not  only  announced  the  discovery  of  a  new  continent  but  proposed 
to  name  it. 

The  narrative  which  Ringmann  had  edited  two  years  before,  "  De 
Ora  Antarctica,"  related  only  to  the  second  expedition  of  Vespucci  — 
the  third,  as  he  called  it  —  of  1501.  But,  from  the  letter  now  before 
Lud  and  Waldseemiiller,  they  learn  much  more  of  the  achievements 
of  the  greatest  of  navigators,  as  they  supposed  him  to  be  ;  for  they 
are  told  that  it  was  at  a  much  earlier  period  he  made  the  first  dis 
covery  of  these  new  countries ;  that  he  had  subsequently  explored 
them  more  extensively ;  and  Waldseemiiller  concludes  that  they  must 
be  a  fourth  part  of  the  world.  "  We  departed,"  says  Vespucci,  "  from 
the  port  of  Cadiz,  May  10th,  1497,  taking  our  course  on  the  great 
gulf  of  ocean,  in  which  we  employed  eighteen  months,  discovering 
many  lands  and  innumerable  islands,  chiefly  inhabited,  of  which  our 
ancestors  make  no  mention." 

Waldseemiiller  (Hylacomylus)  assuming  this  date  of  1497  to  be  cor 
rect  —  if  it  was  so  given  in  the  letter  Lud  declared  the  Duke  had  re 
ceived  from  Vespucci  —  says  in  his  geographical  work,  the  "  Cosmo 
graphies  Introductio  "  :  "  And  the  fourth  part  of  the  world 
having  been   discovered   by  Americus   may   well  be  called  waiasee- 
Amerige,  which  is  as  much  as  to  say,  the  land  of  Americus  Voqmed'i 
or  America."     Again  he  says :   "  But  now  these  parts  are 
more  extensively  explored,  and,  as  will  be  seen  by  the  following  letters, 
another  fourth  has  been  discovered  by  Americus  Vespuccius,  which  I 
see  no  reason  why  any  one  should  forbid  to  be  named  Amerige,  which 
is  as  much  as  to  say  the  land  of  Americus  or  America,  from  its  dis 
coverer,  Americus,  who  is  a  man  of  shrewd  intellect ;  for  Europe  and 
Asia  have  both  of  them  a  feminine  form  of  name  from  the  names  of 
women." 

Now  in  1497  Vespucci  was  still  residing  at  Seville  engaged  as  factor 


128  COLUMBUS,  VESPUCCI,  AND   THE   CABOTS.    [CHAP.  VI 

or  partner  in  a  commercial  house.     In  May  of   the  following  year, 
1498,  Columbus  sailed   on   his  third  voyage,  and  for  several  months 

previous  Vespucci  was  busily  occupied  in  fitting  out  the 
ci^mto18  ships  for  that  expedition.1  It  is  impossible,  therefore,  that  he 
covxirTun-  can  have  gone  to  sea  in  May,  1497,  to  be  absent  eighteen 

months.  There  is  no  pretence  in  his  letters,  nor  anywhere 
else,  that  he  made  a  voyage  earlier  than  1497  ;  he  was  in  Seville  in 
1498 ;  and  he  certainly  was  a  pilot  in  Ojeda's  fleet  when  that  nav 
igator,  in  1499,  followed  Columbus  to  the  coast  of  Paria.  That  Ves 
pucci  was  the  first  discoverer  of  the  Western  continent  is,  therefore, 
clearly  untrue,  although  it  is  true  that  his  account  of  such  a  conti 
nental  land  in  the  west  was  the  one  first  published,  and  by  his  zealous 
friends  at  St.  Die,  who  attached  his  name  to  it.  In  the  suit  between 
Don  Diego  Columbus  and  the  crown  of  Spain,  lasting  from  1508  to 
1513,  the  plaintiff  demanded  certain  revenues  by  right  of  prior  dis 
covery  by  his  father,  the  defence  of  the  crown  being  that  Columbus 
had  no  such  priority.  In  the  voluminous  testimony  on  that  trial  Ves 
pucci  was  not  named  as  one  for  whom  precedence  could  be  claimed,2 
while  Ojeda,  under  whom  Vespucci  went  on  his  first  voyage,  distinctly 
asserts  that  the  main  land  was  discovered  by  Columbus.3 

It  is,  nevertheless,  probably  true  that  Vespucci  explored  along  the 
American  coast  in  his  several  voyages  further  than  any  navigator  of 
his  time,  as  he  sailed  from  about  the  fifty-fourth  degree  of  south  lati 
tude  to  the  peninsula  of  Florida,  and  possibly  to  Chesapeake  Bay  at 
the  north.  Whether  the  St.  Die*  editors  really  believed,  or  whether 
the  dates  of  his  voyages  were,  in  some  way,  so  changed  as  to  make 
it  appear,  that  he  was  also  the  first  discoverer  of  a  western  continent, 
are  questions  which  may  never  be  answered.  But  the  use  they 
made  of  his  name  was  adopted  in  various  works  within  the  next  few 
years,  and  thus  in  the  course  of  time  America  became  the  designa 
tion  of  the  whole  Western  Hemisphere.4 

1  Humboldt,  Examen  Critique,  Tome  v.,  p.  180. 

2  Vespucci  and  his  Voyages,  Santarem  ;  Irving's  Life  of  Columbus,  Appendix. 

3  Irving  (Life  of  Columbus,  vol.  iii.,  Appendix  No.  X.)  examines  carefully  all  the  evidence 
known  at  the  time  he  wrote  on  this  question,  and  Major  (Life  of  Prince  Henry  the  Navigator, 
chap,  xix.)  gives  some  later  facts,  particularly  those  relating  to  the  conscious  or  unconscious 
fraud  of  the  priests  of  St.  Die.     The  subject  is  discussed  at  great  length  by  Humboldt 
(Examen  Critique),  who  believes  that  the  fault  was  not  in  the  statements  of  Vespucci,  but 
in  the  erroneous  printing  of  dates.     Vespucci,  however,  in  more  than  one  place  speaks  of 
his  "  fourth  voyage  "  without  reference  to  dates,  and  it  is  difficult  to  understand  his  relation 
of  the  voyage  of  1497  as  anything  else  than  a  repetition  of  the  incidents  related  by  Ojeda 
as  attending  his  expedition  of  1499,  on  which  Vespucci  went  with  him.     Harrisse,  in  his 
Bibliotheca  Americana  Vetustissima,  gives  a  careful  account  of  the  books  of  Lud  and  Hyla- 
comylus. 

4  Humboldt  suggests  (EramenCritigue.,  Tome  iv.,  p.  52)  that  Hylacomylus,  a  native  of  Ger 
many,  must  have  known  that  in  inventing  the  word  America  to  distinguish  the  new  conti 


1497. J  VOYAGE   OF   THE   CABOTS.  129 

But  even  if  it  were  possible  to  reconcile  beyond  all  cavil  the  rival 
claims  of  the  two  navigators,  and  give  the  honor  where,  as  voyage  of 
between  them,  it  undoubtedly  belongs,  to  Columbus,  there  is  tbe  Cabots- 
a  third  who  takes  precedence  of  both  as  the  first  great  captain  who 
pushed  far  enough  into  the  unknown  seas  to  touch  the  main  land  of 
the  new  continent.  It  is  conceded  that  a  voyage  was  made  as  early 
as  1497  by  John  Cabot,  accompanied  by  his  son  Sebastian,  from  Bris 
tol,  England,  to  find  the  shorter  path  to  India  westward.  In  a  little 
vessel  called  The  Matthew  he  made  his  first  land-fall  on  this  side 
the  Atlantic  on  the  24th  of  June  of  that  year.  Whether  the  land 
first  seen  —  the  Terra  primum  visa  of  the  old  maps  —  was  Cape 
Breton,  Newfoundland,  or  the  coast  of  Labrador,  is  still  an  open  ques 
tion,  though  the  latter  is  held  to  be  the  most  probable  by  some  of 
those  who  have  given  the  subject  most  careful  consideration.1  But  if 
the  ship  held  its  course  of  north  by  west  from  Bristol,  it  could  hardly 
nave  been  anything  else.  At  any  rate,  they  sailed  along  the  coast  for 
three  hundred  league's,  and  that  could  only  have  been  the  shore  of  the 
main  land.  These  Cabots,  then,  were  the  first  discoverers  of  the  con 
tinent,  about  a  year  before  Columbus  entered  the  Gulf  of  Paria,  and 
two  years  before  Ojeda's  fleet,  in  which  Vespucci  sailed,  touched  the 
coast  of  South  America  two  hundred  leagues  farther  south. 

But  which  Cabot  commanded  this  expedition  ?  Here  again  a  doubt 
is  started,  and  the  father  and  the  son  has  each  his  advo-  which 
cates.  John  Cabot  was  probably  a  native  of  Genoa;  but 
he  had  lived  for  many  years  in  Venice,  whence  he  removed 
to  London  with  his  family  "  to  follow  the  trade  of  merchandise."  It 
is  not  known  when  he  was  born,  in  what  year  he  emigrated  to  Eng 
land,  or  how  soon  he  removed  from  London  to  Bristol.  He  was,  it  is 
asserted,  learned  in  cosmography  and  an  accomplished  navigator,  had 

nent,  he  was  giving  it  a  name  of  Germanic  origin.  He  quotes  his  learned  friend  Von  der 
Hagen  to  prove  this,  who  says  that  the  Italian  name  Amerigo  is  found  in  the  Ancient  high- 
German  under  the  form  of  Amalrich  or  Amelrich,  which  in  the  Gothic  is  Amalricks.  The 
incursions  and  conquests  of  the  northern  people,  and  those  of  the  Goths  and  Lomhards 
spread  this  name  Amalrich,  from  which  Amerigo  comes,  among  the  Romance-speaking  peo 
ples.  It  was  borne  by  many  illustrious  men. 

An  attempt  has  recently  bee'n  made  (Atlantic  Monthly,  April,  1875)  to  show  that  the  word 
America  was  derived  from  a  chain  of  mountains  in  Veragua  called  Amerique,  heard  of  by 
the  sailors  of  Columbus  on  his  fourth  voyage,  and  reported  by  them  in  Spain.  If  there 
were  any  mountains  so  called,  and  the  Spaniards  ever  heard  of  them,  they  are  not  men 
tioned  by  any  of  the  early  writers,  and  the  theory,  however  ingenious,  cannot  stand  a 
moment  in  the  light  of  the  evidence  in  regard  to  the  derivation  of  the  word  from  Amerigo 
by  Lud  and  Hylacomylus. 

1  Humboldt,  Examen  Critique;  Biddle,  Memoir  of  Sebastian  Cabot;  J.  G.  Kohl,  Coll.  of 
Maine  Hist.  Soc.,  vol.  L,  Second  Series.  Stevens  in  his  monograph,  The  Cabot?,  p.  17,  thinks 
that  their  landfall  was  Cape  Breton.  Brevoort,  Journal  of  the  Am.  Geog.  Soc.,  vol.  iv.,  p. 
214,  agrees  with  Stevens. 


130  COLUMBUS,  VESPUCCI,  AND   THE    CABOTS.    [CHAP.  VI. 

travelled  by  land  in  the  East,  and  had  heard  from  men  in  the  cara 
vans  of  Arabia  those  strange  and  captivating  tales  of  the  boundless 
wealth  and  magnificence  of  "  farthest  Ind." 1  He  disappears  from 
history  in  1498  as  suddenly  as  he  appeared  two  years  before,  and  it  is 
supposed  that  he  died  about  that  time.  But  whether  it  was  as  an 
old  man  whose  work  was  happily  finished,  or  as  one  cut  off  in  the 
prime  of  his  vigor  and  his  days,  there  is  no  record. 

The  son,  Sebastian,  is  said  to  have  been  only  twenty  years  of  age 
in  1497.  He  was  undoubtedly  a  young  man,  but  some  sup- 
stfbastian  pose  —  a  supposition  necessary,  indeed,  to  their  theory  in 
regard  to  him  and  his  voyages — that  he  was  not  less  than 
twenty-five  years  of  age  when  he  sailed  on  this  voyage  with  his 
father.  And  his  birth-place  is  as  uncertain  as  the  time  of  his  birth. 
He  may  have  been  born  in  Venice ;  perhaps  he  was  born  in  Bristol. 
In  one  account  he  is  represented  as  saying :  "  When  my  father  de 
parted  from  Venice  many  yeeres  since  to  dwell  in  England,  to  follow 
the  trade  of  merchandises,  hee  tooke  mee  with  him  to  the  citie  of 
London,  while  I  was  yet  very  yong,  yet  having  neverthelesse  some 
knowledge  of  letters  of  humanitie,  and  of  the  sphere."2  But  his 
friend  Eden's  testimony  is :  "  Sebastian  Cabot  tould  me  that  he  was 
borne  in  Brystowe,  and  that  at  iiij  yeare  ould  he  was  carried  with 
his  father  to  Venice,  and  so  returned  agayne  to  England  with  his 
father  after  certayne  years,  whereby  he  was  thought  to  have  been 
born  in  Venice."  3 

Both  passages  are  relied  upon  as  sufficient  answer  to  the  objection 
of  Sebastian's  youth  for  the  command  of  so  important  an  expedition  ; 
yet  neither  is  conclusive,  inasmuch  as  neither  gives  the  date  of  the 
father's  emigration  to  England,  while  the  first  proves  altogether  too 
much,  as  it  goes  on  to  say :  "  And  when  my  father  died  in 
Sebastian  that  time  when  riewes  were  brought  that  Don  Christopher 
Colonus  Genoese  had  discovered  the  coasts  of  India,  whereof 
was  great  talke  in  all  the  court  of  King  Henry  the  Seventh,  who  then 
veigned,  insomuch  that  all  men  with  great  admiration  affirmed  it  to 
be  a  thing  more  divine  than  humane,  to  saile  by  the  West  into  the 
East,  where  spices  growe,  by  a  way  that  was  neuer  knowen  before,  by 
this  fame  and  report  there  increased  in  my  heart  a  great  flame  of 
desire  to  attempt  some  notable  thing." 

That  John  Cabot  was  not  dead  at  the  period  referred  to  is  just  as 
certain  as  that  either  he  or  his  son,  or  both,  sailed  in  search  of  a  north- 

1  Letter  of  M.  d'Avezac  to  Dr.  Woods,  Maine  Hist.  Coll.,  vol.  i.,  Second  Series. 

-  Report  of  a  conversation  with  Sebastian  Cabot  by  Galeacius  Butrigarius,  the  Pope's 
Legate  in  Spain,  first  published  in  Ramusio's  Collection  of  Voyages,  copied  by  Hakluyt  and 
many  succeeding  authors. 

3  Richard  Eden's  Decades  of  the  New  World. 


1497.]  MAP   OF   SEBASTIAN  CABOT.  131 

west  passage.  But  this  "  discourse  of  Sebastian  Cabot,"  as  it  is  called, 
though  interesting  for  the  main  facts  to  which  it  testifies,  is  entitled 
to  no  credit  as  strictly  accurate  evidence  as  to  details,  inasmuch  as  the 
narrative  was  not  repeated  by  him  —  the  Pope's  Legate  in  Spain  — 
who  had  it  from  Cabot,  till  years  had  passed  away,  and  then  some 
months  elapsed  before  it  was  put  in  writing  by  the  author  —  Ramusio 
—  who  first  published  it,  and  who  cautioned  his  readers  that  he  only 
presumed  "  to  sketch  out  briefly,  as  it  were,  the  heads  of  what  I  re 
member  of  it."  No  reliance,  of  course,  can  be  put  upon  such  a  docu 
ment  on  any  disputed  point. 

Other  old  chroniclers,  however,  notably  Fabian,  Stow,  and  Gomara, 
speak  of  Sebastian  Caboto  as  the  navigator  "  very  expert  and  cunning 
in  knowledge  of  the  circuit  of  the  world,  and  islands  of  the  same  as 
by  a  sea  card,"  who  demonstrated  to  King  Henry  VII.  the  feasibility 
of  a  northwest  passage  to  the  Indies,  and  who  was  sent  to  find  it ; 
and  on  these  writers  Hakluyt :  relied  for  his  account  of  the  voyage. 
But  Hakluyt  substituted  the  name  of  John,  the  father,  for  that  of 
Sebastian  the  son,2  and  subsequent  authors  have,  for  the  most  part, 
accepted  his  correction. 

Then  the  question  of  late  is  still  further  complicated  by  a  MS.  of 
Hakluyt's   recently  brought   to  light.3      In  this   the   great  n^iuyt-g 
chronicler  asserts  not  only  that  the  first  expedition  was  com-  the°"abotf 
manded  by  Sebastian  Cabot,  but  that  the  voyage  itself  was   vo^ase- 
made  in  1496.     His  words  are :  "  A  great  part  of  the  continent,  as 
well  as  of  the  islands,  was  first  discovered  for  the  King  of  England 
by  Sebastian  Gabote,  an  Englishman,  born  in  Bristow,  son  of  John 
Gabote,  in  1496."     And  again:  "Nay,  more,  Gabote  discovered  this 
large  tract  of  firme  land  two   years  before  Columbus  ever  saw  any 
part  of  the  continent.     ....     Columbus  first  saw  the  firme  lande 
August   1,   1498,   but  Gabote  made  his  great  discovery  in  1496. "4 
There  is  certainly  no  trustworthy  evidence,  and  little  of  any  sort,  of  a 
voyage  by  either  the  father  or  the  son  in  that  year,  and  the  main 
difficulty  here  is  to  reconcile  Hakluyt  to  himself. 

It  is  less  easy  to  dispose  of  a  map  discovered  about  twenty  years 
ago  in  Germany,  and  which  is  in  conflict  with  all  the  statements  upon 
this  point  hitherto  relied  upon.  The  map,5  which  is  now  in  the  im 
perial  library  at  Paris,  covers  the  whole  world ;  in  its  delineations  of 

1  Voyages,  Navigations,  etc.,  by  Eichartl  Hackluyt,  vol.  iii.,  p.  89. 

2  Memoir  of  Sebastian  Cabot,  Biddle,  chap.  v. ;  Life  of  Sebastian  Cabot,  by  J.  F.  Nichols, 
City  Librarian,  Bristol,  England,  p.  46. 

3  Rev.  Dr.  Wood  in  vol.  i.,  Second  Series,  Maine  Hist.  Soc.  Coll. 
*  Maine  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  vol.  i.,  Second  Series. 

5  For  detailed  description  and  discussion  see  J.  G.  Kohl ;  also  letter  of  M.  d'Avezac  to 
Rev.  Dr.  Woods.     Maine  Hist.  Coll.,  vol.  i.,  Second  Series. 


132 


COLUMBUS,  VESPUCCI,  AND   THE    CABOTS.     [CHAP.  VI 


some  countries  it  is  tolerably  correct,  in  others  it  is  full  of  errors  and 
remarkable  for  inexplicable  omissions ;  but  it  assumes,  in  one  of  its  in- 
Testimon  scriptioiis,  to  have  this  authority :  "  Sebastian  Cabot,  Cap- 
Of  the  Map.  tain  and  Pilot-major  of  his  Sacred  Imperial  Majesty  the 
Emperor,  Don  Carlos,  the  fifth  of  his  name,  and  king,  our  lord,  made 
this  figure  extended  in  plane,  in  the  year  of  the  birth  of  our  Savior 
Jesus  Christ,  MDXLIIII."  (1544.)  With  reference  to  Newfoundland 
there  is  this  descriptive  legend  in  Latin  and  Italian :  "  This  land  was 
discovered  by  John  Cabot,  a  Venetian,  and  Sebastian  Cabot  his  son, 


Tunic/  e7iat  Ttebit  c&eutazns  mpcntito  Jcannit  Ce&etus  Jenttus, 


eKZucelffftMtm;  tcrrvm/jwnumfYisttm/'qFpcZfarunt  ffvtruZton/yuaJtifam;  ets 
eppfsitotms  Jhsificonst&wJbtcrtm*  Ttamirrdrunf?,  vtu/jpts  <ytwc/  SeTcnmxS  tKe/risto 
J&eatfUf  txpertec/  Aa£....  ~Jh#erms  goter&tcs  jnsdu/n.  (t$u*£&*t.  forum/  autcm/  moor 


Sebastian  Cabot's   Map,    1544, 

in  the  year  of  the  birth  of  our  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  M.CCCC.XCIIII 
(1494),  the  twenty-fourth  day  of  June  (at  5  o'clock)  in  the  morning ; 
to  which  land  has  been  given  the  name  of  The  Land  First  Seen  (ter 
rain  primum  visam)  ;  and  to  a  great  island,  which  is  very  near  the 
said  land,  the  name  of  St.  John  has  been  given,  on  account  of  its 
having  been  discovered  the  same  day." 

Date  of  the         ^  ^s  legend  be  correct,  it  overthrows  all  previous  theo- 
dS.p'Sted.       ries'  and  Puts  aside  a11  Previous  assertions.     If  the  first  voy 
age    of   the  Cabots  was  made   in    1494,  the  mistake  as  to 
the  age  of  Sebastian  has  been  general,  for  it  is  not  at  all  likely  that 


1497.]  DATE   OF   THE   CABOT   VOYAGE.  133 

any  share  in  the  responsibility  in  an  expedition  so  hazardous  and 
uncertain  would  have  been  attributed  to  a  lad  of  seventeen,  and  it 
conflicts  with  all  we  know  of  his  character  to  suppose  that  he  would 
snatch  at  honors  that  were  not  rightfully  his.  The  question  thus 
opened  anew  has  given  rise  to  much  learned  and  labored  discussion 
both  in  favor  of  this  new  supposition  and  against  it,  but  the  most 
obvious  explanation,  it  seems  to  us,  in  view  of  what  was  previously 
known,  and  from  documents  which  have  more  recently  come  to  light, 
is  that  the  date  of  M.CCCC.XCIIII  on  the  map  is  either  a  misprint 
or  a  blunder. 

There  is  no  violent  improbability  in  the  supposition  that  the  nu 
merals  VII  were  changed  by  the  printer  or  the  copyist  into  IIII,  and 
it  was  much  more  likely  to  happen  than  that  the  inscription  itself, 
while  announcing  a  fact  hitherto  unheard  of,  should  be  in  its  terms 
almost  a  literal  transcript  otherwise  of  a  record  hitherto  universally 
accepted  as  true,  which  agreed  with  all  the  contemporaneous  author 
ities  upon  the  subject,  and  which,  if  it  was  an  error,  would  probably 
have  been  detected  and  exposed,  as  it  was  within  half  a  century  of 
the  time  when  the  alleged  voyage  was  said  to  have  been  made.  This 
record  is  the  "  extract  taken  out  of  the  map  of  Sebastian  Cabot,  cut 
by  Clement  Adams,"  "  hung  up  in  the  privy  gallery  at  Whitehall," 
and  the  Latin  text  of  which  is  thus  translated  by  Hakluyt :  InFcription 
"  In  the  year  of  our  Lord  1497,  John  Cabot,  a  Venetian,  J£$££?p 
and  his  son  Sebastian,  (with  an  English  fleet  set  out  from  hal1- 
Bristol)  discovered  that  land  which  no  man  before  that  time  had  at 
tempted,  on  the  24th  of  June,  about  five  of  the  clocke,  early  in  the 
morning.  This  land  he  called  Prima  Vista,  that  is  to  say,  First  Scene ; 
because,  as  I  suppose,  it  was  that  part  whereof  they  had  the  first  sight 
from  sea.  That  island  which  lieth  out  before  the  land,  he  called  the 
island  of  St.  John,  upon  this  occasion,  as  I  thinke,  because  it  was  dis 
covered  upon  the  day  of  John  the  Baptist" l  The  essential  identity,  in 
everything  but  the  date  of  the  year,  of  the  inscriptions  upon  the  two 
maps,  the  same  day  of  the  month,  the  same  hour  of  the  day,  the  same 
naming  of  the  land  first  seen,  and  the  same  name  given  to  the  neigh 
boring  island,  all  indicate  that  both  referred  to  the  same  expedition, 
and  that  one  was  copied  from  the  other.  In  the  transfer,  what  more 
easy  and  probable  that  the  VII  should  be  changed  to  IIII,  or  that 
IIII  should  be  changed  to  VII  ?  That  such  a  mistake  —  if  this  ob 
vious  explanation  of  the  difficulty  be  accepted  —  was  not  made  by 
Clement  Adams,  whose  map  was  hung  up  in  Whitehall,  and  was  well 
known  in  the  sixteenth  century  to  Sebastian  Cabot's  contemporaries, 
but  that  it  was  made  by  whoever  printed  or  delineated  the  map  of 

1  Hakluyt's  Voyages,  vol.  iii.,  p.  6. 


134  COLUMBUS,  VESPUCCI,  AND   THE    CABOTS.    [CHAP.  VI. 

1544,  unheard  of  till  twenty  years  ago,  there  seems  to  be  ample  evi 
dence. 

This  evidence  comes  from  recent  researches  made  on  behalf  of  the 
British  government  for  historical  information  among  Italian  and  Span 
ish  archives.  It  is  found  that  the  Venetian  ambassador  in  England 
wrote  home  on  the  24th  of  August,  1497,  thus  :  — 

"  Also  some  months  ago  his  majesty,  Henry  VII.,  sent  out  a  Vene- 
Extracts  tian,  who  is  a  very  good  mariner,  and  has  good  skill  in  dis- 
£h™ndPitnai-  covering  new  islands,  and  he  has  returned  safe,  and  has 
iau  archives.  fomi(j  two  very  large  and  fertile  new  islands  ;  having  like 
wise  discovered  the  seven  cities,  four  hundred  leagues  from  England, 
on  the  western  passage.  The  next  spring  his  majesty  means  to  send 
him  with  fifteen  or  twenty  ships."  l  And  in  the  archives  of  Venice 
is  also  a  letter  dated  August  23,  1497,  from  one  Lorenzo  Pasqualigo, 
a  Venetian  living  in  London,  to  his  brother,  in  which  he  writes  :  — 

"  The  Venetian,  our  countryman,  who  went  with  a  ship  from  Bris 
tol  in  quest  of  new  islands,  is  returned,  and  says  that  seven  hundred 
leagues  hence  he  discovered  land,  the  territory  of  the  Grand  Cham  ; 
he  coasted  for  three  hundred  leagues  and  landed ;  saw  no  human 
beings,  but  he  has  brought  hither  to  the  king  certain  snares  which  had 
been  set  to  catch  game,  and  a  needle  for  making  nets ;  he  also  found 
some  felled  trees,  wherefore  he  supposed  there  were  inhabitants,  and 
returned  to  his  ship  in  alarm. 

"  He  was  three  months  on  the  voyage,  and  on  his  return  he  saw  two 
islands  to  starboard,  but  would  not  land,  time  being  precious,  as  he 

was  short  of  provisions The  king  has   also   given   him 

money  wherewith  to  amuse  himself  till  then  (the  next  spring),  and 
he  is  now  at  Bristol  with  his  wife,  who  is  also  a  Venetian,  and  with 
his  sons.  His  name  is  Zuan  Cabot,  and  he  is  styled  the  Great  Ad 
miral  ;  vast  honor  is  paid  him  ;  he  dresses  in  silk,  and  these  English 
run  after  him  like  mad  people,  so  that  he  can  enlist  as  many  of  them 
as  he  pleases,  and  a  number  of  our  own."2 

A  similar  letter,  written  about  the  same  time  from  the  Spanish  am 
bassador  in  England,  and  dealing  with  the  same  incident  —  the  return 
of  this  Genoese  of  Bristol  from  a  voyage  of  discovery  —  is  found  in 
the  Spanish  archives  at  Seville.  And  unless  other  contemporary  tes 
timony,  equally  direct,  respectable,  and  impartial,  shall  be  found  to 
offset  these  statements,  they  may  be  accepted  as  settling  two  points  : 
First,  that  the  first  voyage  of  the  Cabots,  on  which  the  western  conti 
nent  was  discovered,  was  made  in  the  summer  of  1497  ;  and  second, 
that  the  leader  of  the  enterprise  was  John  (Zuan)  Cabot. 

1  Papers  on  English  Affairs;  extracted  from  the  Venetian  Calendar,  by  Rawdon  Brown, 
p.  260. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  262. 


1497.] 


JOHN    CABOT  IN  ENGLAND. 


135 


Of  him  this  is  the  one  fair  glimpse  that  history  gives  us.  When  or 
where  he  was  born,  when  or  where  he  died  and  was  buried,  can  only 
be  guessed  at  with  more  or  less  of  probability  ;  and  of  all  the  John  Cabot 
events  of  a  life  that  certainly  was  not  a  short  one  this  inci-  in  London- 
dent  alone  stands  out  distinct  and  clear,  as  he  walks  through  White 
hall  and  the  Strand,  from  palace  to  counting-house,  clothed  in  the 
costliest  garments  of  the  day,  telling  courtier  and  merchant  and  mari 
ner  how  only  a  month's  sail  away  he  had  found  the  Eastern  Continent 
of  which  Columbus  had  hitherto  discovered  only  Some  outlying  islands. 
And  it  is  no  marvel  that  these  English  should  have  "  run  after  him 
like  mad,"  should  have  watched  for  his  coming,  and  have  given  him 


John   Cabot  in    London. 

good  hearty  English  cheers  whenever  he  appeared,  for  his  brave  ex 
ploit  was  to  the  honor  of  the  English  name,  as  well  as  to  his  own. 

If  other  proof  were  wanting  that  this  was  the  first  voyage,  a  curious 
bit  of  evidence  comes  in  to  corroborate  the  story  of  the  return  of  the 
successful  navigator  and  the  reception  that  was  given  him.     In  the 
account  of  the  Privy  Purse  Expenses  of  King  Henry  is  this  Rewardfor 
entry  :  "  10th  August,  1497.     To  hym  that  found  the  New  ^SU 
Isle,  10Z."  i     That  this  refers  to  Cabot  seems  improbable ;  America- 
but  it  is  quite  likely  that  the  king  should  have  sent,  or  given  with  his 
own  hand,  such  a  reward  to  the  sailor  who  from  his  faithful  watch 
at  the  mast-head  was  the  first  to  cry  "Land  ho!"  on  the  coast  of 
North  America. 

1  Nicolas,  Excerpta  Historica,  quoted  by  Biddle  and  by  Nicholls. 


136  COLUMBUS,  VESPUCCI,  AND   THE    CABOTS.    [CHAP    VI. 

The  voyage  was  made  under  a  patent  granted  by  the  king  on  the 
5th  of  March,  1496,  authorizing  John  Cabot  and  his  three  sons,  Lewis, 
Patents  of  Sebastian,  and  Sancius,  to  "  sail  to  all  parts,  countries,  and 
John  cabot.  geas  of  foe  East,  of  the  West,  and  of  the  North,  under  our 
banners  and  ensigns,  with  five  ships  of  what  burthen  or  quantity 
soever  they  be,  and  so  many  mariners  or  men  as  they  will  have  with 
them  in  the  said  ships,  upon  their  own  proper  costs  and  charges,  to 
seek  out,  discover,  and  find  whatsoever  isles,  countries,  regions,  or 
provinces  of  the  heathen  and  infidels,  whatsoever  they  be,  and  in  what 
part  of  the  world  soever  they  be,  which  before  this  time  have  been 
unknown  to  all  Christians."  The  patent  was  in  entire  disregard  of 
the  bull  of  Pope  Alexander  VI.,  of  May,  1498,  by  which  the  heathen 
world  was  divided  from  pole  to  pole  between  Spain  and  Portugal ;  but 
the  south  was  probably  excluded  from  the  sailing  directions  in  defer 
ence  to  actual  possession  by  either  of  those  nations.  The  king  was 
cautious ;  he  did  not  mean  to  run  any  risk  of  involving  himself  in 
trouble  with  either  of  those  powers  ;  he  carefully  stipulated  that  one 
fifth  of  all  the  profits  of  the  adventure  should  be  his,  and  all  the  cost 
he  threw  upon  the  Cabots.  Though  a  year  passed  away  before  the 
expedition  set  out,  it  is  doubtful  if  it  included  more  than  the  single 
ship  of  the  admiral  —  The  Matthew  of  Bristol.  At  all  events  that 
ship,  The  Matthew,  Captain  John  Cabot,  cleared  out  at  the  Bristol 
custom-house  for  the  territories  of  the  Grand  Khan  and  a  market  in 
May,  1497,  and  returned  again  to  port  in  about  three  months,  having 
sailed  meanwhile  three  hundred  leagues  along  the  coast  of  North 
America. 

In  the  Italian  archives,  from  which  we  just  now  quoted,  it  is  said 
Sebastian  that  another  expedition  was  to  follow  up  this  great  discovery 
witha,81"18  ^n  the  spring.  "  The  king,'''  writes  Pasqualigo,  "  has  prom 
ised  that  in  the  spring  our  countryman  shall  have  ten  ships, 
armed  to  his  order,  and  at  his  request  has  conceded  him  all  the  pris 
oners,  except  such  as  are  confined  for  high  treason,  to  man  his  fleet." 
On  the  3d  of  February,  1498,  accordingly,  a  second  patent,  or  rather 
license  was  issued  by  which  John  Kabotto  was  authorized  to  impress 
six  English  ships,  "and  them  convey  and  lede  to  the  Londe  and  Isles 
of  late  founde  by  the  said  John  in  oure  name  and  by  our  commande- 
mente."  The  expedition  consisted,  however,  of  only  two  ships;  on 
board  of  them  went  three  hundred  passengers,  whether  volunteers  or 
convicts  from  the  jails,  and  its  evident  purpose  was  colonization.  It 
sailed  from  Bristol  in  the  spring  —  probably  in  May  —  under  the 
command — so  all  the  old  narratives  concur  in  saying  —  of  the  young 
Sebastian.  John  disappears  with  this  grant  to  him  to  settle  the  lands 
he  had  discovered  ;  is  dead  —  at  least  to  history. 


1498.]  SEBASTIAN   CABOT   EXPLORES   THE   COAST.  137 

But  the  voyage  was  barren  of  any  results  of  value,  except  that 
Sebastian  noted  that  "  in  the  seas  thereabout  were  multitudes  of  big 
fishes  that  they  call  tunnies,  which  the  inhabitants  call  Baccalaos, 
that  they  sometimes  stoppsd  his  ship."  And  he  therefore  "  named 
this  land  Baccalaos."  l  Probably  he  left  his  three  hundred  emigrants 
somewhere  on  this  inhospitable  coast  to  make  such  settlement  as  they 
could,  while  he  explored  still  farther  northward.  He  reached  the 
latitude  of  67£°,  fighting  his  way  through  seas  of  ice,  and  looking 
anxiously  for  the  gulf  that  should  lead  him  to  the  Indies.  "  To  his 
great  displeasure"  he  found  the  coast,  at  length,  trending  eastward, 
probably  on  the  peninsula  of  Cumberland  ;  his  crews,  perhaps  reduced 
in  numbers  by  the  hardships  of  such  navigation,  perhaps  in  despair 
and  alarm  at  penetrating  farther  into  a  region  where  in  July  the  cold 
was  increasing  and  "  the  dayes  very  long  in  maner  without  any 
night,"  grew  insubordinate  and  mutinous,  and  clamored  to  return. 
Turning  southward,  he  picked  up  his  three  hundred  colonists,  or  what 
was  left  of  them,  and  sailed  into  pleasanter  seas. 

"  Ever  intent  to  find  that  passage  to  India,"  and  baffled  in  the 
search  for  it  at  the  north,  he  hoped  to  discover  it  by  run-  Firgt  coagt 
ning  down  the  coast.     Into  what  bays  and  estuaries  he  may  ®f^™^ 
have  penetrated  ;  how  anxiously  he  scanned  the  headlands ;  tinent- 
how  diligently  sounded  for  depth  of  water,  and  marked  the  set  of  cur 
rents  that  he  might  miss  no  indication  of  an  opening  to  the  west ;  or 
how  long  he  was  in  making  this  first  coast-survey  of  the  Continent, 
there  is  no  record.2     But  doubtless  he  did  his  work   faithfully  and 
well,  keeping  along  the  shore  of  Maine  and  Massachusetts,  missing  no 
landmarks,  doubling  Cape  Cod,  perhaps  rounding  Nantucket  and  run 
ning  into  Buzzard's  Bay  and  Long  Island   Sound,  and  approaching 
the  harbor  of  New  York  ;  for  he  sometimes  landed,  found  "  on  most 

1  Peter  Martyr,  De  Orbe  Novo.     But  Dr.  Kohl  doubts  this.     The  cod-fishery,  he  says, 
had  long  existed  on  the  northern  coasts  of  Europe,  and  the  fish  were  called  by  the  Ger 
manic  nations  "  Cabliauwe,"  or  '*  Kabbeljouwe,"  or  still  farther  transposed,  "  Backljau." 
The  Portuguese  changed  it  to  Bacalhao.     The  root  of  the  word  is  the  Germanic  "  bolch," 
meaning  fish.     The  name,  therefore,  could  not  have  had  an  Indian  origin.     Maine  Hist. 
Coll.,  vol.  i.,  Second  Series.     Brevoort,  on  the  other  hand  (Journal  of  the  Am.   Geog.  So 
ciety,  p.  205),  says  it  is  simply  "  an  old  Mediterranean  or  Romance  name,  given  to  the  pre 
served  codfish,  when  it  has  been  dried  and  kept  open  and  extended  by  the  help  of  a  small 
stick.     This  was  the  stockfish  of  the  North,  and  from  the  word  Baculum,  it  became  the  Bac- 
a/ao  and  Baccalieu  of  the  South  of  Europe." 

2  Brevoort  and  Stevens  doubt  if  Cabot  ever  sailed  south  of  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence. 
Peter  Martyr  —  who  says,  "  Cabot  is  my  very  friend  whom  I  use  familiarly  and  delight  to 
have  him  sometimes  keepe  me  company  in   mine   own   house "  —  asserts  "  that  he  was 
thereby  brought  so  far  into  the  South  by  reason  of  the  land  bending  so  much  southwards, 
that  it  was  there  almost  equal  in  latitude  with  the  sea  Fretum  Herculeum  (Straits  of  Gib 
raltar)  having  the  north  pole  elevate  in  the  same  degree."     Gomara  says  that  Cabot  sailed 
so  far  north  that  "  the  days  were  very  long,  as  it  were  without  night ; "  and  that  he  fol 
lowed  the  coast  southward  to  the  38°,  whence  he  returned  home. 


138 


COLUMBUS,  VESPUCCI,  AND   THE   CABOTS.     [CHAP.  VI. 


of  the  places,  copper  or  brass  among  the  aborigines,"  and  captured 
some  of  the  natives  and  brought  them  home  to  England.  But  when 
he  had  reached  38°  north,  that  is,  about  Cape  Hatteras,  his  provisions 
failing,  he  changed  his  course  for  Bristol. 

Whether  Sebastian  Cabot  was  satisfied  that  no  passage  to 
of  Sebastian   Cathay  was  to  be  found  between  67 \°  and  38°,  north  lati 
tude,  there  is  nowhere  any  positive  assurance.    He  lived,  how 
ever,  to  be  eighty  years  of  age ;  in  the  course  of  that  long  life  he  held 

the  honorable  and  influential  position  of 
Pilot-major  both  in  Spain  and  England  ; 
he  led,  in  the  service  of  Spain,  an  event 
ful  expedition  to  the  Rio  de  la  Plata  ;  in 
the  service  of  England  he  sent  another 
to  Russia,  and  established  commercial  in 
tercourse  between  the  two  nations ;  but, 
unless  he  made  a  third  voyage  to  North 
America  in  1516,  which  was  certainly 
projected,  though  its  accomplishment  is 
questioned,  he  abandoned,  after  his  re 
turn  in  1498,  all  farther  attempts  at 
discovery  or  settlement  on  the  coast  of 
North  America.  The  honor  of  the  dis 
covery  of  the  mainland  of  the  continent 
was  his ;  but  seventy  years  passed  away 

before  the  first  permanent  colony  was  planted  north  of  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico. 


Sebastian   Cabot. 


Fac-simile  of  Signature  of  Amerigo  Vespucci 


CHAPTER  VII. 

SPANISH   DISCOVERIES  AND  EXPLORATIONS. 

DESIGNS  FOR  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  A  NORTHWEST  PASSAGE  TO  INDIA.  —  THE  COR- 
TEREAL  VOYAGES. — VASCO  NUNEZ  DE  BALBOA  REACHES  THE  PACIFIC  OCEAN. — 
SEARCH  FOR  THE  FOUNTAIN  OF  YOUTH. — FLORIDA  DISCOVERED.  —  GULF  OF  MEX 
ICO  SAILED  OVER. EXPLORATIONS  ON  THE  ATLANTIC  SEA-COAST. ESTAVAN  GOMEZ 

ON  THE  BORDERS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES.  —  EXPEDITION  OF  PAMPHILO  DE  NAR- 
VAEZ  TO  FLORIDA.  —  ADVENTURES  OF  CABECA  DE  VACA.  —  THE  ENTERPRISE  OF 
HERNANDO  DE  SOTO.  —  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI  RIVER.  —  DEATH  AND 
DRAMATIC  BURIAL  OF  DE  SOTO.  —  RETURN  OF  THE  TROOPS  OF  DE  SOTO.  —  TRIS 
TAN  DE  LUNA'S  ATTEMPT  TO  FOUND  A  COLONY. 

THAT  the  Cabots  were  the  first  modern  discoverers  of  the  Western 
Continent,  or,  indeed,  that  Columbus  was  the  first  European  who,  in 
the  fifteenth  century,  visited  the  New  World,  is  not  undisputed.  John 
Skolnus,  or  John  of  Kolno,  a  Pole,  is  said  to  have  been  on  the  coast  of 
Labrador  in  1477  ;  it  is  claimed  by  some  French  writers  that  in  1488 
one  Cousin,  a  Frenchman  of  Dieppe,  was  driven  across  the  Atlantic 
and  made  land  on  the  other  side  at  the  mouth  of  a  wide  river  ;  that 
with  him  was  one  of  that  family  of  Pinzons  of  Palos  which  gave,  fom 
years  later,  captains  —  one  of  them  perhaps  this  very  captain  —  to  two 
of  the  three  ships  of  Columbus.  The  evidence  of  such  an  expedition  is 
so  slight,  that  constructive  arguments  have  only  more  or  less  weight 
as  they  are  more  or  less  ingenious. 

When,  however,  the  path  to  the  new  Indies  was  fairly  opened,  in 
the  last  decade  of  the  fifteenth  century,  fresh  voyages  fol 
lowed  in  rapid  succession,  and  not  navigators  only,  but  sov-  Spain 
ereigns  vied  with  each  other  to  share  with  Spain  the  glory  E^ro^n  er 
and  the  riches  of  the  new  discoveries.     Henry  VII.  of  Eng 
land,  when  he  gave  a  patent  to  the  Cabots,  no  doubt  reflected  that 
Columbus  might  have  been  an  English,  rather  than  a  Spanish  admiral. 
The  king  of  Portugal  did  not  attempt  to  conceal  his. chagrin  that  the 
dominion  and  power  which  had  fallen,  or  inevitably  would  fall,  into 
the  hands  of  Spain,  he  had  rejected.     But  though  Spain  could  not  be 
interfered  with  at  the  south,  it  was  still  possible  to  find  the  yet  undis 
covered  way  to   India  by  a  northern  passage  ;  there  might  still  be 
unknown  islands,  or  even  continents,  full  of  gold  and  heathen  men,  in 
northern  seas. 


140          SPANISH   DISCOVERIES    AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VII. 


Gaspar  Cor- 

tereai  seeks    s.dQ:e 

a  northwest          o 


In  1500,  accordingly,  two  caravels  were  dispatched  from  Portugal 
under  the  command  of  Gaspar  Cortereal,  in  search  of  a  pas- 

,       .        •,  TT  T  ^i 

£Q  India  in  northern  latitudes.  He  made  no  settlement, 
passage.  j^  explored  the  coast,  either  on  that  or  a  second  voyage 
made  the  next  year,  for  six  or  seven  hundred  miles,  as  far  north  as 
the  fiftieth  parallel,  where  his  further  progress  was  stopped  by  the  ice. 
The  country  he  called  Terra  de  Labrador  —  the  land  of  laborers  — 
though  that  name  was  afterwards  transferred  to  a  region  farther  north. 


Cortereal  at  Labrador. 

The  people  were  like  Gypsies  in  color,  well  made,  intelligent,  and 
modest ;  they  lived  in  wooden  houses,  clothed  themselves  in  skins  and 
furs,  used  "  swords  made  of  a  kind  of  stones,  and  pointed  their  arrows 
with  the  same  material."  The  country  abounded  with  timber,  espe 
cially  pine ;  the  seas  were  full  of  fish  of  various  kinds ;  and,  with  such 
natural  advantages,  added  to  its  populousness,  it  was  thought  that  its 
acquisition  might  prove  valuable  to  Portugal.  If  Cortereal  did  not 
open  a  way  to  India,  or  find  mines  of  gold  to  rival  those  of  Hispaniola, 
at  least  he  had  discovered,  as  he  hoped,  a  new  Slave  Coast,  and  he 
enticed  or  forced  on  board  his  caravels  fifty-seven  of  the  natives  whom 
he  meant  to  sell  as  slaves.  These  were  pronounced  as  "  admirably 
calculated  for  lafeor,  and  the  best  slaves  ever  seen." 1 

1  The  Cortereal  voyages  are  not  free  from  the  confusion  which  surrounds  so  many  of  the 
early  narratives.  Several  writers  (see  Barrow's  Chronological  History  of  Voyages ;  Lard- 
ner's  Cyclopedia ;  Edinburgh  Cabinet  Library)  following  Cordeiro's  Historia  fnsularia,  assert 
that  Newfoundland  was  first  discovered  by  John  Vaz  Costa  Cortereal  in  1463  or  1464 ;  but 
Biddle  (Memoir  of  Cabot,  book  ii.,  chapter  11)  shows  that  there  is  no  good  authority  for 
any  such  voyage.  A  passage  in  the  life  of  his  father  by  Ferdinand  Colon,  however,  seems 
to  have  been  overlooked  by  all  these  writers.  He  says  that  Vincent  Dear,  a  Portuguese, 


1502.J  THE    CORTEREAL   VOYAGES.  141 

Cortereal  made  two  voyages,  but  from  the  second  he  never  came 
back.  '  It  is  uncertain  what  his  fate  was.    He  may  have  been   v  ,. 

J  rate  of  me 

lost  at  sea ;  or,  as  it  has  been  conjectured,  he  may  have  been  Cortereals- 
killed  by  the  natives  in  an  attempt  to  kidnap  another  cargo  of  slaves, 
or  in  revenge  for  the  capture  of  those  stolen  on  the  previous  voyage. 
But  this,  of  course,  involves  the  presumption  that  the  kidnapping  was 
on  his  first  expedition,  and  that  the  retribution  fell  upon  him  on  his 
return  to  the  coast.  But  the  latest  and  most  reasonable  suggestion  is 
that  it  was  on  his  second  voyage  that  he  committed  this  outrage  upon 
the  Indians,  and  that  he  and  his  fifty  captives  perished  together  at 
sea.  And  this  is  the  more  probable  conjecture  since  we  know  that 
Miguel  Cortereal,  a  younger  brother,  sailed  from  Lisbon,  on  the  10th 
of  May,  1502,  with  two  vessels,  in  search  of  Gaspar,  eight  months 
after  the  report  of  the  arrival  of  one  of  Gaspar's  caravels.  The 
Indians  may  have  punished  him  also  for  his  brother's  cruelty  to  their 
kindred,  for  he  did  not  return.  The  next  year  the  king  sent  out  an 
expedition  in  quest  of  both,  but  that  came  back  without  tidings  of 

returning  from  Guinea  to  Terceira,  saw,  or  thought  he  saw,  an  island,  and  told  this  to  one 
Luke  de  Gazzana,  a  wealthy  Genoese  merchant.  Gazzana  sent  out  a  vessel,  and  "  the  pilot 
went  out  three  or  four  times  to  seek  the  said  island,  sailing  from  one  hundred  and  twenty 
or  one  hundred  and  thirty  leagues,  but  all  in  vain,  for  he  found  no  land.  Yet  for  all  this, 
neither  he  (Gazzana)  nor  his  partner  gave  over  the  enterprise  till  death,  always  hoping  to 
find  it."  Ferdinand  Colon  adds  that  a  brother  of  Gazzaua  also  told  him  that  he  knew  the 
sons  of  "  the  captain  who  discovered  Terceira,"  Gaspar  and  Michael  Cortereal,  "  who  went 
several  times  to  discover  that  land ;  and  it  is  plain  from  the  context  that  Ferdinand  Colon 
means  to  refer  to  distinct  expeditions  to  the  West  —  those  before  his  father's  first  voyage  by 
Gazzana 's  direction,  when  John  Vaz  Costa  Cortereal  was  governor  of  Terceira;  and  these 
by  the  younger  Cortereals  in  1500.  It  was  natural  enouirh  that  these  expeditions  should 
be  confounded  with  each  other,  and  this  confusion  was  not  cleared  up  even  when  Hakluyt 
published  the  first  edition  of  his  voyages  in  1582,  who  says :  "  An  excellent  learned  man  of 
Portugal,  of  singular  gravety,  authortie,  and  experience,  tolde  me  very  lately  that  one 
Gonus  Cortereal,  captayne  of  the  yle  of  Terceira,  about  the  yeare  1574,  Avhich  is  not  above 
eight  years  past,  sent  a  ship  to  discover  the  North  West  Passage."  Here  is  an  obvious 
mistake  of  about  a  century. 

In  regard  to  the  actual  expedition  of  Gaspar  Cortereal,  the  principal  original  source  of 
information  hitherto  relied  upon,  is  the  letter  of  Pietro  Pasqualigo,  Venetian  Ambassador 
to  Portugal,  to  his  brother,  October  19,  1501.  This  was  first  published  in  a  volume  of  voy 
ages  printed  in  Venice  in  1507,  under  the  title  Paesi  Novamente  retrovati  et  Novo  Mondo. 
But  Dr.  Kohl  (Collections  of  Maine  Hist.  Society,  1869),  relying  upon  some  recent  researches 
in  the  Portuguese  archives  by  M.  Kuntsmann  (Die  Entdeckung  America's),  assumes  that 
Pasqualigo's  letter  refers  to  the  second  voyage  of  Cortereal,  and  that  the  caravel,  on  board 
which  he  was  with  fifty  of  the  Indians,  never  arrived.  The  letter  says  :  "  On  the  8th  of  the 
present  month  one  of  the  two  caravels  which  his  most  serene  majesty  dispatched  last  year 
on  a  voyage  of  discovery  to  the  North,  under  the  command  of  Gaspar  Corterat,  arrived 

here They  have  brought  hither  of  the  inhabitants,  seven  in  all,  men,  women, 

and  children,  and  in  the  other  caravel,  which  is  looked  for  every  hour,  there  are  fifty 
more."  If  this  was  the  first  voyage,  the  other  caravel  subsequently  arrived  with  the  fifty 
Indians,  as  Cortereal  certainly  made  a  second  expedition.  The  date  alone  of  the  letter 
(October,  1501)  —  if  Cortereal  sailed  in  1500  —  suggests  that  Pasqualigo  confounded  the 
two  voyages,  and  that  he  refers  to  the  second,  from  which  Cortereal  did  not  return. 


142         SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND  EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VII. 

either.  Then  the  eldest  brother,  Vasqueanes  Cortereal,  the  governor 
of  Terceira,  one  of  the  Azores,  begged  permission  to  continue  the 
search,  but  the  king  forbade  it,  and  the  Portuguese,  discouraged  by 
such  a  succession  of  disasters,  abandoned  all  farther  attempts  at  dis 
covery  in  the  northern  seas. 

These  explorations  in  high  northern  latitudes  the  Spanish  left  for 
the  most  part  to  other  nations.  Not  that  they  were  less  eager  to  find 
a  passage  to  India,  but  they  believed  that  they  alone  were  seeking  it 
in  the  right  direction.  The  conviction  was  of  slow  growth  that 
another  continent,  hitherto  unknown,  lay  between  Europe  and  Asia, 
and  that  this  must  be  passed  before  the  coveted  spice  islands  of  the 
East  could  be  reached  by  sailing  westward.  Even  Columbus  himself 
must  have  had  some  misgivings,  for  while  he  professed  to  believe 
that  on  his  third  and  fourth  voyages  he  had  reached  the  continent  of 
Asia,  he  was  none  the  less  persistent  in  seeking  from  Venezuela  to 
Honduras  for  a  strait  that  should  lead  him  to  a  South  Sea  and  to 
search  of  India.  It  is  not  easy  to  reconcile  his  avowed  theoretical  con- 
fora*west-  Dictions  with  his  practical  conduct ;  but  it  is  remarkable 
em  passage,  fa^  conjecture  or  reasoning  should  have  led  him  to  seek  for 
such  a  channel  where,  if  it  existed  at  all  anywhere  between  Terra 
del  Fuego  and  the  Arctic  Sea,  it  was  most  likely  to  be  found.  In  his 
fourth  and  last  voyage,  crowded  with  misfortunes  more  romantic  than 
the  boldest  imagination  would  have  ventured  to  put  forth  as  fiction, 
he  groped  his  way  along  the  coast  of  Central  America  in  search  of  an 
eastern  passage.  The  problem  of  an  easy  and  rapid  communication 
by  sea  with  the  far  East,  has  to-day  no  other  solution  than  a  possible 
artificial  channel  where  the  great  navigator  hoped  to  find  one  hollowed 
out  by  the  waters  of  two  meeting  seas. 

To  the  genius  of  Columbus  this  homage  was  paid  by  all  his  con 
temporaries —  whither  he  led  there  they  followed.  As  Ojeda 
ditions  from  and  Vespucci,  after  his  discovery  of  the  Southern  Continent, 
on  his  third  voyage,  went  to  Paria  and  explored  the  coast 
north  and  south  of  that  gulf,  so  Solis  and  Pinzon,  moved  by  his  ex 
ample,  sailed  into  the  Caribbean  Sea  and  along  its  shores  where 
Columbus,  on  his  fourth  voyage,  had  led  the  way.  Within  four  or 
five  years  of  his  death,  in  1506,  the  whole  coast  from  Carthagena  to 
Yucatan  had  been  visited  by  many  adventurers,  dividing  the  country 
amongst  them,  fighting  with  each  other  as  occasion  offered,  slaughter 
ing,  mutilating,  or  enslaving  the  Indians,  as  best  served  their  purpose 
in  the  gathering  of  gold. 

Vasco Nunez  Among  these  freebooters  was  Vasco  Nunez  de  Balboa,  an 
e  Baiboa.  excellent  specimen  of  that  class  of  Spanish  discoverers  who 
overran  the  southern  half  of  the  New  World,  and  of  which  Pizarro 


1506.] 


VASCO   NU&EZ   DE   BALBOA. 


143 


and  Cortez  —  who  were  fitted  for  their  future  careers  at  the  same 
time  and  in  the  same  school  and  region  with  Vasco  Nunez — were  still 
more  brilliant  instances. 

This  Nunez  was  eminent  in  that  bravery  which  belonged  to  men 
who,  clad  in  steel,  armed  with  an  arquebuse  or  cross-bow,  and  a  sword, 
mounted,  perhaps,  on  horseback,  were  ready  to  meet  any  number  of 
naked  savages  with  only  bows  and  arrows ;  he  was  vigorous  and  capa 
ble  of  great  endurance,  as  well  as  bold ;  and  he  was  pitilessly  cruel, 
unscrupulous,  and  dissolute,  but  at  the  same  time  zealous  for  the 
Church. 


Vasco   Nunez   on   Shipboard. 

To  escape  from  his  creditors  in  Hispaniola  he  concealed  himself  in 
a  cask,  on  board  a  vessel  about  to  sail  for  the  Caribbean  Sea.1  When 
far  from  land  he  crept  from  his  hiding-place  and  prevailed  by  prayers 
and  tears  upon  Enciso,  the  commander  of  the  expedition,  not  to  put  him 
ashore  and  leave  him  -  as  he  threatened,  to  starve  on  a  barren  island. 
Afterward,  when  the  vessel  was  wrecked,  Nunez,  who  had  been  on  the 

1  Herrera,  Decade  I.,  hook  viii.,  chap.  2. 


144         SPANISH  DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VII. 

coast  before  and  remembered  an  Indian  village  on  the  river  Darien, 
led  the  crew,  harassed  by  the  natives  and  reduced  almost  to  starvation, 
to  that  place.  By  force  of  character  and  skilful  management  he  soon 
became  the  head  of  a  party,  helped  to  depose  Enciso,  to  whom  he  owed 
his  life,  got  rid  of  others  who  had  some  title  to  the  government  of  the 
province,  and  raised  himself  to  supreme  command. 

From  the  son  of  an  Indian  chief  he  learned,  on  one  of  his  maraud 
ing  expeditions  into  the  interior,  that  six  days'  iourney  fur- 
Rumors  of  a        &  ij 
Land  of         tlier  on  was  another  sea,  and  beyond  it  a  country  so  abound 
ing  in  gold  that  the  people  ate  and  drank  out  of  dishes  made 
of  it.     In  September,  1513,  he  started  from  Darien  to  find  that  sea. 
He  fought  his  way  through  tribes  of  hostile  Indians,  whom  he  sub 
dued  by  killing  many,  "  hewing  them  in  pieces  as  the  Butchers  doe 
fieshe  in  the   shambles,  from    one    an    arme,  from  another  a  legge, 


ftt 


-^:  J^H£X 


from  him  a  buttocke,  from 
another  a  shoulder,  and  from 
some  the  necke  from  the  bodie 
at  one  stroke  ;  "  and  some  the 
dogs  brought  down  and  tore  ^j 
limb  from  limb  "  as  if  they  $ 
were  wild  bores  or  Hartes."  l 
At  length  the  invaders 
reached  a  high  mountain  from  the  top  of  which,  said  the  Indian 
guides,  the  southern  sea  was  in  sight.  Nunez  ordered  his  men  to  halt 
while  he  climbed  up  alone.  Far  beneath  him,  on  the  other  side, 

1  Peter  Martyr's  Third  Decade,  trans,  by  Lok.     Hakluyt,  vol.  v.,  edition  of  1812 


The  south  sea. 


1513.] 


DISCOVERY   OF   THE   PACIFIC. 


145 


lay  the  blue  ocean,  sparkling  and  glorious  in  the  sunlight,  stretching 
as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  North,  South,  West,  to  where  Digcovery  of 
sky  and  water  seemed  to  meet.  It  was  for  this  that  all  the  o^'L^slspt 
great  navigators  of  the  world  had  been  seeking  for  nearly  1613- 
twenty  years,  and  when  the  sight  of  it  broke  upon  Vasco  Nunez  he  fell 
prone  upon  the  ground.  Raising  himself  presently  upon  his  knees,  he 
gave  thanks  to  God  that  it  had  "pleased  his  diuine  maiestie  to  reserue 
vnto  that  day  the  victorie  and  prayse  of  so  great  a  thing  vnto  him." 
An  ecstacy  of  delight,  of  triumph  and  devotion  possessed  him.  With 
one  hand  he  beckoned  his  followers  to  come  to  him  ;  with  the  other 
he  pointed  wildly  seaward,  "  shewing  them  the  great  maine  sea  here 
tofore  vnknowne  to  the  inhabitants  ox  Europe,  Aphrike,  and  Asia.' 


First   Embarkation  on  the   South   Sea. 


Again  he  fell  upon  his  knees,  and  to  his  prayers,  "  desiring  Almighty 
God  and  the  blessed  Virgin  to  fauor  his  beginnings,  and  to  give  him 
good  successe  to  subdue  those  landes,  to  the  glory  of  his  holy  name, 
and  increase  of  his  holy  religion."  His  companions  joined  him  and 
"  praysed  God  with  loude  voyces  for  ioy,"  for  he  "  exhorted  them  to 
lyft  up  their  hearts  and  beholde  the  lande  euen  now  vnder  their  feete, 
and  the  sea  before  their  eyes  which  shoulde  bee  vnto  them  a  full  and 
iust  rewarde  of  their  great  laboures  and  trauayles  now  ouerpassed." 
He  ordered  heaps  of  stone  to  be  piled  up  in  token  that  he  took  pos 
session  of  the  country  for  his  sovereign,  and  the  name  of  Ferdinand 


146         SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND  EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VII. 

of  Castile  lie  carved  upon  many  trees  as  he  went  down  the  Pacific 
slope. 

The  men,  marshalled  in  battle  array,  were  ordered  by  this  pious 
captain  to  assail  the  natives  and  "  to  esteeme  them  no  better  than 
dogges  meate,  as  they  shoulde  be  shortly."  l  From  that  fate,  how 
ever,  gold  could  always  save  them.  Twelve  men,  among  whom  was 
Pizarro,  the  future  conqueror  of  Peru,2  were  sent  in  advance  to  find 
the  safest  and  shortest  path  to  the  shore.  At  the  spot  where  they 
approached  it  two  canoes  were  stranded  upon  the  beach.  As  the 
flood-tide  floated  them  Alonso  Martin  stepped  into  one,  and  Blaze  de 
Atienza  followed  in  the  other,  and  they  called  to  their  companions  to 
witness  that  they  were  the  first  Spaniards  —  Martin  first,  and  Atienza 
second  —  who  embarked  upon  the  South  Sea.  When,  a  few  days 
later,  Vasco  Nunez  arrived  with  his  whole  company,  he  marched  into 
the  water  up  to  his  thighs,  with  his  sword  and  target,  and  solemnly 
pronounced  that  ocean  and  all  that  pertained  to  it  as  the  possession  of 
the  sovereigns  of  Castile  and  Leon,  which  he  would  defend  against 
all  comers.3 

Thenceforward  the  exploration  and  occupation  of  the  western  coast, 
both  north  and  south,  went  forward  with  little  interruption.  But 
Fate  of  the  man  whose  energy  and  perseverance  led  the  way,  Vasco 
Bezde  Bai-  Nunez  de  Balboa,  fell  a  victim,  five  years  later,  to  the  jealousy 
and  fears  of  the  Governor  of  Darien,  Peter  Anias,  who 
ordered  him,  after  the  mockery  of  a  trial,  to  be  beheaded.  Such 
atrocities  were  so  common  among  the  Spaniards  that  this  one,  though 
perpetrated  against  a  man  whose  eminent  services  had  been  recog 
nized  by  an  appointment  as  Adelantado  over  the  sea  he  had  discov 
ered,  seems  to  have  gone  unpunished  and  almost  unnoticed  by  the 
government  at  home. 

While  the  course  of  Spanish  adventure  was  thus,  in  the  earlier 
years  of  the  sixteenth  century,  directed  towards  Central  America, 
leading,  in  due  season,  to  such  events  as  the  discovery  of  the  Pacific, 
the  conquests  of  Peru  and  Mexico,  and  the  exploration  of  the  western 
coast  of  the  present  United  States,  it  was  not  forgotten  that  there 
might  be  other  regions  further  north  on  the  Atlantic  coast  worth  pos 
sessing.  Juan  Ponce  de  Leon,  who  had  enriched  himself  by  the  sub 
jugation  of  Porto  Rico,  resolved,  when  deprived  of  the  governorship 
of  that  island,  to  increase  his  fame  and  his  riches  by  some  new  enter 
prise.  He  had  heard  that  there  were  lands  at  the  north,  of  which 
marvellous  tales  were  told,  not  only  of  great  wealth  of  gold  and  prec 
ious  stones,  but  that  hidden  away  somewhere  in  the  deep  recesses  of 

i  Peter  Martyr.  2  £ye  Of  p;Zarro,  by  Arthur  Helps,  p.  55. 

*  Ilerrera,  Decade  I.,  book  x.,  chap.  1. 


SEARCH    FOR   THE    FOUNTAIN   OF    YOUTH. 


1512.] 


PONCE   DE   LEON   DISCOVERS   FLORIDA. 


147 


its  forests  bubbled  up  a  fountain  of  which  whosoever  drank  should 
receive  the  priceless  gift  of  perpetual  youth.     The  rumor  of  Legend  of 
gold  was  enough  to  tempt  Spanish  cupidity  ;  but  that  was  ofVou™.'"1 
as  nothing  to  Ponce  de  Leon,  already  rich  but  already  old,  to  the 
promise  of  being  young  again. 

To  find  this  new  marvel  of  the  New  World,  Juan  Ponce  de  Leon 
started  from  Porto  Rico  with  three  ships,  in  March,  1512.1     As  was 
fitting  in  a  quest  for  a  fountain  of 
immortality,  the  adventurers  floated 
over  that  summer  sea  as  men  intent 
on  pleasure,  to  whom  time  was  long 
and  burdened  with  no  serious  du 
ties  ;    they    sailed   from    island   to 
island,  touching  here  and  there  as 
fancy  led  them,  seeking  the  safest 
and   pleasantest   coves,   where   the 
shades  were   deepest  in  the  noon 
day   sun   and    the   waters    coolest, 
where  the  fruits  were  sweetest,  the 
Indians    most    friendly    and   their 
women    loveliest.     After  a    month 
of  such  idle  dalliance  they  crossed 
the   Bahama  Channel,  and,  on  the 
27th  of  March,  which  happened  to  be  Easter  Sunday  and  which  the 
Spaniards  call  Pascua  de  Flores,2  they  saw  and  passed  an  island  on 
the  opposite  coast.     Two  or  three  days  later  Ponce  de  Leon  Discovery 
landed  on  the  main,  near  the  point  now  called  Fernandina.3  March^' 
Taking  possession  of  it  in  the  name  of  Spain  he  namejd  it  1512- 
Florida,  because  the  land  was  first  seen  on  the  Pascua  de  Flores,  and 
because  it  was  fair  to  look  upon,  covered  with  pleasant  groves  and 
carpeted  with  flowers. 

For  more  than  thirty  days  they  sailed  along  the  coast  on  both  sides 
of  the  Peninsula,  and  among  the  Bahama  Islands,  sometimes  traffick 
ing,  more  often  fighting  with  the  Indians,  who  were  bold  and  fierce,  but 
seeking  always  for  the  wonderful  fountain.  Whether  it  was  on  the 
mainland,  or,  as  some  of  the  Indians  said,  on  the  Island  of  Bimini,  of 

1  Dr.  J.  G.  Kohl  (Maine  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  vol.  i.,  Second  Series,  p.  240)  says  March  3, 1513. 
and  that  Peschel,  in  his  Geschichte  des  Zeitalters  der  Entdeckungen,  has  proved  that  the  year 
1512,  to  which  this  voyage  of  De  Leon  is  usually  assigned,  is  incorrect.    March  3,  1512,  old 
style,  would  be  1513,  new  style,  and  Bancroft  accordingly  gives  the  date  15^|.     Dr.  Kohl 
leaves  it  doubtful  whether  he  means  15*-|,  or  15^|. 

2  Herrera,  Hildreth,  Irving,  and  some  other  writers,  erroneously  state  that  Pascua  de 
Flores  is  Palm   Sunday.     La  Pascua  de  las  Flores  is  La  Pascua  de  la  Resurrection,  or 
Easter  Sunday. 

8  Peter  Martyr  says  (Decade  V.,  chap.  1)  "that  parte  of  the  lande  which  Johannes  Pon 
tius  first  touched,  from  the  north  side  of  the  Fernandina." 


Juan  Ponce  de  Leon. 


148         SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VII. 

the  Bahama  group,1  the  restoring  waters  were  never  found  ;  though 
those  who  sought  them  drank  of  every  spring  and  bathed  in  every 
stream  their  eager  and  hungry  eyes  could  spy  in  the  deep  shadows  of 
the  woods. 

Leon  claimed,  nevertheless,  great  merit  with  the  king  for  finding 
a  land  so  fair  and  promising,  and  he  was  made  its  Adelantado,  on 
condition  that  he  would  colonize  it.  In  1521,  this  first  governor  of 
territory  within  the  limits  of  the  present  United  States,  returned  to 
the  province  assigned  to  him,  but,  in  a  fight  with  Indians  who  opposed 
his  landing,  he  received  from  an  arrow  a  wound  from  which  no  heal 
ing  waters  could  wash  the  poison.  He  retired  then  to  Cuba,  thankful, 

perhaps,  at  last,  that  "  eloquent,  just,  and  inightie  death  " 
juan  Ponce  could  release  him  from  the  burden  of  old  age,  doubly 

weighted  now  by  the  calamity  of  poverty,  for  the  remnant 
of  his  riches  was  spent  in  his  last  expedition.2  Other  Spanish  naviga 
tors  followed  this  gay  old  cavalier,  but  the  object  of  their  search  was 
gold,  not  youth.  Don  Diego  Velasquez,  one  of  the  earlier  adventurers 
in  Hispaniola,  who  had  conquered  Cuba,  and  become  its  governor, 
ambitious,  energetic,  and  intelligent,  sent  several  expeditions  into  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  wisely,  for  his  purpose,  directing  them  to  its  southern 
rather  than  to  its  northern  coasts.  It  was  the  road  to  Mexico,  which 
Cortez  soon  found  ;  but  that  Florida  was  visited  by  two  of  the  other 
captains  of  Velasquez  was  almost  by  accident  rather  than  by  design. 

Hernandez  de  Cordova  touched  there  on  his  return  from   a 

Voyages  in 

the  Gulf  of    cruise  along  the  coast  of  Yucatan,  in  1517,  and  John  de  Gri- 

Mexico.  .  .        e 

jalva  did  the  same  thing  the  next  year.  In  1516,  Diego 
Miruelo  is  said  to  have  made  a  voyage  on  his  own  account  to  Florida, 
and  to  have  brought  back  some  gold.  In  1518,  also,  Francis  Garay, 
the  governor  of  Jamaica,  landed  on  that  shore,  was  attacked  by  the 
natives,  and  lost  most  of  his  men.3  But  he  returned  the  next  year, 

1  In  Peter  Martyr's  Map  of  loll,  Florida  is  laid  down  as  Isla  de  Beimeni. 

2  "  Whether  the  old  fable  of  the  Fountain  of  youth  was  derived  by  the  Indians  from  the 
Spaniards,  or  was  of  indigenous  growth,  it  is  impossible  to  decide.   It  was  undoubtedly  firmly 
believed  in  among  the  other  marvels  of  the  New  World.    "  The  Dene.  Aiglianus  the  Senator, 
and  Licentiatus  Figuera,  sent  to  Hispaniola  to  be  President  of  the  Senate,  ....  these  three 
agree,"  says  Peter  Martyr,  "that  they  had  heard  of  the  fountaine  restoringe  strength,  and 
that  they  partly  belieued  the  reportes  ;  but  the}-  sawe  it  not,  nor  proued  it  by  experience, 
because  the  inhabitants  of  that  Terra  Florida  haue  sharpe  nayles,  and  are  eager  defenders 
of  their  rights."     But  the  Dene  related  that  an  Indian,  "  grieuously  oppressed  with  old 
age,  moued  with  the  fame  of  that  fountaine,  and  allured  through  the  lone  longer  of  lyfe, 
went  from  his  natiue  ilande  neere  vuto  the  country  of  Florida  to  drinke  of  the  desired  foun 
taine,  ....  and  hauinge  well  drunke  and  washed  himselfe  for  many  dayes  with  the  ap 
pointed  remedies,  by  them  who  kept  the  bath,  hee  is  reported  to  haue  brought  home  a  manly 
strength,  and  to  haue  vsed  all  manly  exercises,  and  that  hee  married  againe,  and  begatt  chil 
dren."     Aiglianus  is  De  Ayllon,  who  visited  Florida  after  De  Leon. 

3  Peter  Martyr,  Decade  V.,  chap.  1. 


1520.]  KIDNAPPING  INDIANS.  149 

and  was  the  first  thorough  explorer  of  the  Gulf  coast  of  the  United 
States.  He  made  its  entire  circuit,  and  drew  a  chart  by  which  he 
showed  that  "  it  bendeth  like  a  bow,"  and  that  a  line  stretched  from 
the  shore  of  Yucatan  to  the  point  at  which  Ponce  de  Leon  first  touched, 
would  "  make  the  string  of  the  bow."  Florida,  he  found,  was  not  an 
island,  as  De  Leon  had  supposed,  "  but  by  huge,  crooked  windings  and 
turninges  to  bee  joyned  to  this  maine  continent  of  Tenustitan"  (Yu 
catan).  He  came,  also,  "  vpon  a  riuer,  flowing  into  the  Ocan  with  a 
broade  mouth ;  and  from  his  ships  discryed  many  villages  couered  with 
reedes  ;  "  and  this  was  the  first  discovery  of  the  Mississippi,  the  Rio 
del  Espirito  Santo,  the  River  of  the  Holy  Ghost.1  But  he  thought 
the  coast,  which  he  spent  about  eight  months  in  exploring,  "  to  be  very 
litle  hospitable,  because  he  sawe  tokens  and  signes  of  small  store  of 
golde,  and  that  not  pure/'  2 

Fernandina    was    as  yet   the    northernmost  point  touched   by  the 
Spaniards  on  the  Atlantic  coast.     But  northward  from  that 

,  ,  ~,.  ,  ,  Explorations 

place  was  a  country  known  as  Gmcora,  and  somewhere  uptneAt- 
within  it  was  supposed  to  be  the  sacred  river  of  Jordan, 
whose  waters  possessed  a  healing  power  akin  to,  if  not  the  same,  as 
those  of  the  Fountain  of  Youth.3  To  this  land  of  Chicora  Lucas  Vas- 
quez  de  Ayllon  either  sent  or  led  an  expedition  of  two  ships  in  1520 
from  Hispaniola,  and  the  river  now  known  as  the  Combahee,  in  South 
Carolina,4  he  named  the  Jordan.  It  does  not  appear  that  he  went 
anywhere  else  than  to  the  mouth  of  this  river,  though  he  was  sent  in 
search  of  a  passage  that  would  lead  to  India.  But  the  real  purpose 
was  slaves.  The  people  of  the  Jordan,  unlike  those  farther  south, 
gave  the  strangers  a  kindly  welcome.  They  crowded  aboard  the 
ships,  the  like  of  which  they  had  never  seen  before,  as  eager,  as  cu 
rious,  and  as  confiding  as  children.  The  very  ease  of  kid- 

,1  i  i  •    •  -i.i  Kidnapping 

napping  these  simple  and  unsuspicious  savages  might  have  Indians  for 
suggested  it.  The  hoisting  of  the  sails,  the  weighing  of  the 
anchors,  gave  them  no  alarm  ;  imperceptibly  to  them  the  vessels  stole 
away,  on  an  even  keel,  without  apparent  motion,  and  not  till  they 
were  so  far  from  the  shore  that  to  return  was  impossible,  did  the  poor 
creatures  understand  the  cruel  treachery  of  which  they  were  the  vic 
tims.  They  were  to  be  sold  as  slaves  for  the  gold  mines  and  planta 
tions  of  the  Islands.  But  of  the  two  vessels  one  foundered  at  sea,  and 
all  on  board  perished  ;  on  the  other,  but  few  lived  to  reach  Hispaniola, 

1  Shea's  Discovery  and  Exploration  of  the  Mississippi,  p.  viii. 

2  Peter  Martyr. 

3  Compare,  however,  Herrera,  Decade  I.,  lib.  ix.,  chap.  5 ;  Narrative  of  Fontanedo  in  Ter- 
naux-Compans,  and  note  by  the  editor,  and  J.  G.  Kohl,  in  Maine  Hist.  Socy.  Coll.,  p.  248 
Dr.  Kohl  says  that  the  river  was  named  Jordan  for  the  captain  of  one  of  Ayllon 's  ships. 

*  Bancroft,  Hist.  U.  S.,  vol.  1 . 


150          SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VII 

for  this  virtue  has  always  belonged  to  the  North  American  Indian  — 
he  prefers  death  to  slavery,  and  has  often  pined  away  and  speedily 
died,  like  other  wild  creatures,  when  deprived  of  freedom. 

Four  or  five  years  later,  another  expedition  sailed  from  Hispaniola, 
Expedition  which  Ayllon  certainly  commanded  in  person,  and  from 
Vazquez?  which  he  never  returned.  It  consisted  of  several  ships,  car- 
de  Ayiion.  rying  five  hundred  soldiers  and  sailors,  and  a  few  women.1 
Taking  the  Jordan  as  the  starting  point,  the  coast  was  explored  as  far 
north  as  Maryland,  and  some  expeditions  were  made  inland.2  Many 
were  killed  by  the  Indians  ;  many  more  died  from  sickness,  and  among 
them  Ayllon  himself,  till  only  one  hundred  and  fifty,  out  of  the 
original  company  of  six  hundred,  were  left  to  return  to  Hispaniola. 

But  the  most  that  any  of  these  adventurers  did  was  to  penetrate  the 
country  a  short  distance,  to  traffic  a  little  with  natives  when  they  hap- 


Straits  of  Magellan. 

pened  to  be  in  the  mood,  and  more  often  to  retire  before  them  when 

they  opposed  the  landing  or  the  stay  of  the  intruders.     Mean- 

cortez  in       while,  on  the  other  side  of  the  Gulf,  Cortez  had  penetrated 

Mexico. 

into  Mexico,  and  the  spirit  of  adventure,  the  dreams  of 
boundless  wealth,  the  hopes  of  brilliant  conquest,  received  a  new  and 
intense  impulse  by  his  success.  "  To  the  South,  to  the  South,"  wrote 
Peter  Martyr,  "  For  the  great  and  exceeding  riches  of  the  JEquinoc- 
tiall,  they  that  seeke  riches  must  not  goe  vnto  the  cold  and  frozen 
North." 

1  The  earlier  authors  differ  as  to  whether  there  were  three  or  six  ships,  and  whether  they 
sailed  in  1524,  1525,  or  1526. 

2  On  the  Portuguese  Mnp  of  Ribero,  1529,  the  Land  of  Aylloii  —  "  Tierra  de  Ayllon,"  — 
covers  the  present  States  of  Georgia,  the  Carolinas,  Virginia,  and  Maryland. 


1525.]  VOYAGE    OF    ESTAVAN    GOMEZ.  151 

And  the  hoped-for  passage  to  the  East  was  not  forgotten.  Rich 
as  was  the  booty  in  Mexico  and  Central  America,  it  was  as  nothing 
to  the  splendid  acquisition  of  India,  if  only  the  short  way  by  sea 
could  be  discovered.  Magellan  had  passed  by  the  Straits  to  which 
he  gave  his  name  into  the  Pacific  Ocean,  but  nothing  was  gained 
thereby  over  the  older  route  round  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.  With 
that  great  navigator  had  sailed,  as  pilot  of  one  of  his  ships,  Stephen 
Gomez,  a  Portuguese  by  birth,  but  then  serving  in  Spain.  He  had 
deserted  Magellan  soon  after  entering  the  Straits,1  but  does  not  seem, 
therefore,  to  have  been  held  in  any  less  estimation  in  Spain,  as  he  was, 
with  Cabot,  the  pilot-major,  Ferdinand  Columbus,  and  other  eminent 
cosmographers,  one  of  the  Council  of  Badajoz,  appointed  in  1524  to 
settle  the  conflicting  claims  of  Spain  and  Portugal  to  the  New  World. 

In  February,  1525,  Gomez  sailed  under  a  royal  commission  to  find 
a  passage  to  Cathay,  which  he  believed  was  somewhere  be-  Estayan  Go_ 
tween  Florida  and  the  Bacallaos,  or  Newfoundland.  As  he  ™eazst  oflores 
was  absent  about  ten  months,  he  had  ample  time  to  explore  u- s-  1525- 
the  whole  Atlantic  coast  of  the  present  United  States.  He  sailed 
from  North  to  South  to  about  the  latitude  of  New  York,  but  at  what 
point  he  first  touched  the  continent,  into  what  bays  and  rivers  he  may 
have  entered,  there  is  no  positive  record.2  He  brought  home  a  cargo 
of  the  natives  to  be  sold  as  slaves,  and  an  anecdote  in  relation  to  them, 
repeated  from  book  to  book  for  three  hundred  and  fifty  years,  has 
chiefly  preserved  the  memory  of  this  expedition.  So  great  was  the 
anxiety  to  be  assured  that  the  passage  to  India  had  been  discovered, 
that  one  inquirer,  carried  away  by  zeal  and  enthusiasm,  when  he 
learned  that  Gomez  had  returned  with  a  cargo  of  slaves  {esclavos), 
mistaking  the  word,  hurried  to  the  court  with  the  glorious  news  that 
the  ships  were  laden  with  cloves  (clavos)^  and  must  therefore  have 
found  their  way  to  the  Spice  Islands  of  the  East.  "  But  after 
the  court  vnderstoode,"  says  the  faithful  chronicler,  Peter  Gomez' 

voyiicre. 

Martyr,  "  that  the  tale  was  transformed  from  cloues  to  slaues 

(clavos  to  esclavos),  they  brake  foorth  into  a  great  laughter,  to  the 

shame  and  blushinge  of  the  fauorers  who  shouted  for  joy." 

A  more  formidable  and  more  disastrous  attempt  than  any  of  these 
to  take  possession  of  the  country  was  made  in  1528  by  Pam- 
philo  de  Narvaez.     He  sailed  from  Spain  in  1527  under  a  Narvaea. 

1528 

commission  from  the  Emperor,  Charles  V.,  with  five  ships 

1  That  the  Gomez  who  explored  the  coast  of  the  United  States  in   1525,  and  the  Gomez 
who  deserted  Magellan,  are  identical,  is  generally  accepted  as  without  question.    But  Piga- 
fetta,  in  his  relation  of  the  Magellan  voyage,  calls  the  Gomez  of  that  fleet,  not  Estevan 
but  Emamtel.     See  Pigafetta,  in  Pinkerton's  Voyages  and  Travels,  vol.  xi. 

2  On  the  Ribero  Map,  the  legend,  "  Tierra  de  Estevan  Gomez,"  is  written  across  that  re 
gion  now  occupied  by  the  Middle  and  Northern  Atlantic  States  of  the  Union. 


152          SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VII 

and  about  five  hundred  men  ;  but  delays  occurring  in  the  West  Indies, 
where  he  passed  the  following  winter,  he  made  a  second  start  in  March, 


ciavos  and 


1528,   with    four  ships  and  a 

brigantine,  carrying  four  hun 

dred  men  and  eighty  horses. 

Two   days  before    Easter   he 

landed  in  or  near  Tampa  Bay,1 

and  prepared  at  once  to  ad 

vance  into  the  country.     In  a 

reconnoissance  along  the  coast 

they  came  upon  a  little  Indian 

village,  where  they  found  some  bodies  in  a  sort  of  mummified  condi 

tion,  the  sacred  remains,  no  doubt,  of  the  ancestors  or  the  chiefs  of  the 

tribe.    The  officer  in  command  chose  to  assume  this  preservation  of  the 

dead  as  a  kind  of  idolatry,  and  ordered  them  to  be  burned,  and  the 

outrage  was  a  sufficient  warning  to  the  natives  of  the  treatment  they 

might  expect  from  such  invaders. 

Alvar  Nunez  Cabeca  de  Vaca,  a  Spaniard  of  noble  birth,  was  the 
treasurer  of  the  expedition  and  its  voluntary  historian.2  He  protested 
earnestly  against  the  mad  project  of  Narvaez  to  leave  the  coast,  cer 
tain,  he  said,  that  were  that  done,  he  "  would  never  more  find  the 
ships,  nor  the  ships  him."  Nevertheless  he  determined  to  follow  his 
captain  rather  than  be  left  in  command  of  the  fleet,  lest  his  courage 

1  Bancroft  ;  compare  Buckingham  Smith  in  notes  to  Letters  of  De  Solo. 

2  The  Relation  of  Alvar  Nunez  Cabe9a  de  Vaca,  is  a  minute  narrative  of  this  expedition 
and  his  own  strange  personal  adventures.     An  admirable  translation  of  it  was  made  by  the 
late  Buckingham  Smith. 


1528.]  DISASTROUS   EXPEDITION   OF   NARVAEZ.  153 

should  be  called  in  question.  The  marching  force  consisted  of  three 
hundred  men,  forty  of  whom  were  mounted.  Each  man  car 
ried  two  pounds  of  biscuit  and  half  a  pound  of  bacon,  and  Narvaezmto 
with  this  slender  store  of  provision  they  plunged  into  an  un 
known  wilderness,  where  their  first  act  had  already  been  one  sure  to 
provoke  hostilities  from  its  savage  people.  Their  rations,  with  such 
fruit  of  the  palmetto  as  they  could  pick  up  by  the  way,  supported  them 
for  the  first  fifteen  days,  and  then  the  fear  of  starvation  was  added  to 
the  other  difficulties  which  they  began  to  understand.  Toiling  on 
through  swamps  and  forests,  wading  the  lagoons,  crossing  rivers  by 
swimming  and  on  temporary  rafts,  harassed  continually  by  an  enemy 
with  whom  suddenness  and  secrecy  of  attack  were  the  first  arts  of 
war,  their  courage  and  their  hopes  were  only  sustained  by  some  vague 
reports  from  prisoners  of  gold  to  be  found  in  a  distant  district  called 
Apalachen.1 

They  had  started  on  the  1st  of  May ;  on  the  25th  of  June  a  mis 
erable  village  was  reached  of  forty  houses,  in  the  middle  of  a  dense 
swamp,  from  which  the  Indians  had  fled  leaving  behind  only  the 
women  and  children.  This  was  Apalachen,  and  they  gave  thanks  to 
God,  believing  that  "  here  would  be  an  end  to  their  great  hardships." 
The  village  they  took  without  resistance,  and  in  it  found  maize  to 
satisfy  their  hunger ;  the  woods  around  abounded  with  game,  had 
they  had  the  skill  to  take  it ;  and  gold,  they  believed,  was  plentiful. 
But  hardly  had  they  laid  off  the  heavy  armor  from  their  galled  and 
weary  backs,  when  the  Indians  attacked  them  and  burnt  the  wigwams 
in  which  they  had  taken  shelter,  provocation  being  first  given,  as 
usual,  by  the  Spaniards,  who  held  a  cacique  as  prisoner  who  had  come 
to  them  as  a  friend. 

Their  great  need  of  rest  and  the  time  required  to  examine  the 
country  round  about  for  gold,  detained  them  twenty -five  days  in  Apa 
lachen.  But  no  gold  was  to  be  found,  and  but  little  maize  ;  in  all 
that  district  this  miserable  village  of  forty  houses  was  the  largest ;  the 
people  were  not  numerous,  were  very  savage,  and  very  poor.  Steal 
ing  out  from  their  lurking-places  in  the  neighboring  swamps,  they  so 
harassed  the  Spaniards  that  one  could  not  venture  from  the  camp  so 
short  a  distance  as  to  lead  a  horse  to  water,  that  an  arrow  would  not 
whiz  through  the  bushes  from  an  unseen  foe.  Thus  sore  beset  with 
hunger,  disease,  and  danger,  all  their  hopes  of  sudden  wealth  de 
stroyed,  they  resolved  at  length  to  make  their  way  to  the  sea. 

In  a  march  of  twelve  or  fifteen  days  they  fought  their  way  to  the 

1  At  the  head-waters  of  the  Apalacha  River  are  the  Apalachian  Mountains  of  Georgia, 
to  which  probably  the  Indians  referred,  while  the  Spaniards  understood  them  to  mean  the 
village  near  its  mouth. 


154         SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VII. 

coast.  Well  nigh  worn  out  they  lay  down  upon  the  sands  in  sore 
perplexity  and  distress,  behind  them  a  country  they  could  not  live 
in,  before  them  a  sea  over  which  there  was  but  one  way  to  escape. 
Building  the  They  must  build  vessels;  but  they  "knew  not  how  to  con 
struct,  nor  were  there  tools,  nor  iron,  nor  forge,  nor  tow,  nor 
resin,  nor  rigging ;  nor  any  man  who  had  a  knowledge 

of  their  manufacture  ;  and,  above  all,  there  was  nothing  to  eat  while 


Return  to  the  Beach. 


building,  for  those  who  should  labor."  But  invention  is  sometimes 
born  of  despair.  A  soldier  undertook  to  make  a  pair  of  bellows  with 
pipes  of  hollow  wood  and  deerskins,  and  his  example  was  emulated 
by  others.  The  cross-bows,  the  stirrups,  the  spurs,  and  whatever  else 
they  had  of  iron,  were  beaten  into  nails,  into  axes,  saws,  and  other 
needful  tools.  With  these  they  contrived  to  build  five  boats,  each 
more  than  thirty  feet  in  length,  the  seams  of  which  they  caulked  with 
the  fibre  of  the  palmetto,  and  pitched  with  pine  rosin ;  cordage  was 
made  of  the  tails  and  manes  of  the  horses ;  the  sails  from  the  shirts 
of  the  men.  Every  three  days  a  horse  was  killed  for  food,  while  the 
boats  were  building,  the  skin  of  the  legs  taken  off  whole  to  be  used 
when  tanned  as  water-bottles.  Besides  the  horse-flesh  they  fed  upon 
shell-fish  and  such  maize  as,  through  hard  fighting,  they  could  get 
from  the  Indians. 

At  this  place  forty  of  the  men  died  of  disease  and  hunger,  besides 

suffering  of    those  who  had  been  killed  in  their  contests  with  the  savages. 

ien.        ^jj  kut  one  of  the  horses  had  been  slaughtered  and  eaten, 

and  for  that  reason  they  called  the  spot  Bahia  de  Caballos,  or  the  Bay 


1528.] 


CABECA   DE   VACA. 


155 


of  the  Horses.1  On  the  22d  of  September,  almost  five  months  from 
the  time  of  their  departure  from  the  spot,  nearly  three  hundred  miles 
distant,  where  they  first  landed,  the  wretched  fugitives  embarked 
upon  their  frail  boats,  loading  them  down  almost  to  the  gunwales, 
and  pushed  out  into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 

They  crept  slowly  along  the  coast  for  weeks,  hoping  to  reach  the 
Spanish  colony  of  Panuco  on  the  western  shore  of  the  gulf.  Endur 
ing  always  the  extremity  of  suffering  from  cold,  and  wet,  and  hunger, 
they  were  buffetted  when  on  the  sea  by  storms,  and  repulsed  by  the 
Indians  when  they  attempted  a  landing.  At  length  the  boats  parted 
company.  First  the  governor  refused  to  throw  a  rope  to  the  men  of 
Cabega  de  Vaca,  of  whom  only  one  or  two  were  able  to  lift  an  oar, 
saying  the  time  had  come  when  each  man  must  take  care  of  himself. 
Then  a  storm  parted  the  others,  and  De  Vaca's  boat  was  driven  upon 
the  beach  of  an  island.2  To  get  off  again  the  next  day  the  men 
stripped  to  the  skin,  as  it  was  necessary  to  wade  into  the  water  to  dig 
the  boat  out  of  the  sand  and  once  more  set  her  afloat.  But  when  this 
was  done  and  they  had  jumped  aboard,  the  surf  again  upset  her  before 
they  had  time  to  resume  their  clothing.  Some  were  drowned  ;  those 


Upset  in  the   Surf. 

who  were  not  were  left  as  absolutely  naked  and  destitute  as  they  came 
into  the  world,  for  not  one  thing  in  the  boat  was  recovered.  For 
tunately  the  Indians  were  humane  and  pitiful,  making  fires  to  warm 

1  The  Bahia  de  Caballos  is  probably  the  present  harbor  of  St.  Marks. 

2  Cabeca  de  Vaca  called  this  island  Mathado  —  misfortune.     Its  locality  is  uncertain, 
but  it  may  have  been  the  island  of  Galveston.     Buckingham  Smith  is  entirely  at  a  loss  to 
identify  it.     Fairbanks  (History  of  Florida}  thinks  it  was  the  island  of  Santa  Rosa. 


156         SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VII. 

the  half  frozen  and  famished  bodies  of  the  strangers,  giving  them  food 
from  their  own  scanty  stores.  In  a  few  days  these  were  joined  by 
companions  from  another  boat,  who  had  also  been  wrecked  not  far 
distant.  The  company  now  numbered  eighty.  Exposure,  starvation, 
and  sickness,  soon  decided  the  fate  of  most  of  them,  though  some 
prolonged  their  lives  awhile  by  feeding  on  those  who  were  the  first 
to  die.  Before  the  winter  was  over,  only  fifteen  of  the  eighty  were 
left  alive.  The  governor  and  all  his  boat-load  had  been  driven  out 
to  sea,  and  perished  soon  after  he  had  refused  assistance  to  his  follow 
ers  in  distress. 

A  few  of  the  adventurers  in  the  other  boats  had  saved  themselves 

in  other  places,  but  one  after  another  they  all,  except  four,  had  died 

miserably,  some  killed  by   the   Indians,   who  had  made   them  their 

slaves,  some  dying  of  starvation,  some  from   exposure  and  disease. 

The  four  survivors,  by  name  Cabeca  de  Vaca,  Dorantes,  Cas- 

Cabeca  de  . 

vaca  ana  his  tello,  and  Estevanico,  the  last  a  negro,  wandered  from  tribe 
to  tribe  for  six  years,  held  sometimes  in  the  cruelest  slavery, 
and  sometimes  carrying  on  a  petty  traffic  with  the  natives,  in  combs, 
in  bows,  arrows,  and  fishing-nets  of  their  own  making.  Their  food 
was  chiefly  the  fruit  of  the  prickly  pear,  roots,  and  nuts ;  what  little 
venison  they  occasionally  received  from  the  Indians  they  ate  raw,  for 
only  thus  could  their  weakened  stomachs  digest  it.  They  always  went 
naked,  and  "  twice  a  year,"  says  Cabega  de  Vaca,  "  we  cast  our  skins 
like  a  serpent."  In  later  years  they  gained  influence  and  power  among 
the  Indians  by  acting  as  physicians,  working,  he  declares,  the  most 
marvellous  cures  simply  by  reciting  pater  nosters  and  by  making  the 
sign  of  the  cross,  till  they  came  to  be  held  in  great  reverence  and  fear. 

Thus  slowly  and  painfully  they  made  their  way,  wandering  to 
and  fro  through  forests  and  swamps,  over  prairies  and  deserts,  ex 
posed  to  the  summer's  heat  and  the  winter's  cold,  across  the  present 
State  of  Texas,  through  the  Mexican  province  of  Sonora,  to  the  sea 
coast  of  the  other  side  of  the  continent  on  the  Gulf  of  California. 

There  they  found  and  were  succored  by  their  countrymen,  who 
had  already  invaded  that  country  in  search  of  emeralds,  of  gold, 
and  of  slaves,  and  speedily  returned  to  Spain,  heroes  of  an  adventure 
as  remarkable  and  as  romantic  as  any  recorded  in  the  Spanish  annals 
of  North  America. 

There  arrived  in  Spain  about  the  same  time  with  Cabeca  de  Vaca 
iiernando  one  wno  had  been  engaged  in  quite  a  different  sort  of  ser 
vice.  This  was  Hernando  de  Soto,  who  had  followed  Pizarro 
to  Peru,  and  shared  with  him  his  dangers  and  his  success.  Leaving 
Spain  like  so  many  others  "  with  nothing  but  blade  and  buckler,"  he 
had  come  back  with  wealth  to  further  his  ambition  for  the  acquisition 


1538.]  IIERNANDO   DE    SOTO.  157 

of  some  new  country  where  he  should  be  the  leader  and  not  a  subaltern 
merely.     The  disastrous  result  of  every  expedition  to  Florida  thus  far 
had  not  shaken  the  belief  among  the  adventurous  Spaniards  in  the 
value  of  the  country,  and  that  somewhere  in  the  interior  were  riches 
such  as  had  been  gathered  in  marvellous  abundance  in  other  parts 
of  the  New   World.      De   Soto  appeared  at  court  with  a  numerous 
band  of  followers  in  gorgeous  apparel  and  other  lavish  display  of  the 
wealth  he  had  acquired  in  Peru,  and  asked  that  authority  to  take  pos 
session    of    Florida,  with   a  commission   as  Adelantado,   be  DeSotois 
given   him.      The    announcement  of   his  intentions  was  re-  J^d^f 
ceived  with  the   utmost   enthusiasm.      Gentlemen  of  birth  Florida- 
and  position  flocked  from  all  parts  of  Spain  to  his  standard,  eager 
to    serve    under  so    gallant  and   re 
nowned  a  leader,  and  in  an  adven 
ture  which  he  thought  so  hopeful  as 
to  be  willing  to  risk  in  it  his  fortune, 
his  fame,  and  his  life.     Some  came 
even  from  Portugal,  and  they  seemed 
better  to  understand   the  character 
of   the    enterprise.      For   when   De 
Soto  mustered  his  men  at  San  Lucar 
the  Spaniards  appeared  "  in  doublets 
and  cassocks  of  silk,  pinckt  and  em 
broidered,"  as  if  about  to  start  on 
a    holiday    excursion,    while    "  the 
Portuguese  were  in  the  equipage  of 

IT-  ?51T>i  De    SotO. 

soldiers  in    neat   armor.         Jout   so 

strong  was  the  desire  to  go  with  him  that  men  parted  with  their 
estates  to  buy  an  interest  and  an  outfit  in  this  new  expedition  ;  and 
the  excitement  was  not  a  little  increased  by  the  story  of  Cabecja  de 
Vaca,  who  on  his  return  had  also  asked  to  be  made  Adelantado  of 
Florida.  It  was  thought  he  could  tell,  if  he  would,  wonderful  tales  of 
the  richness,  in  many  precious  things,  of  the  region  where  he  had  en 
dured  so  much,  and  out  of  which  he  had  come  literally  a's  naked  as 
he  came  into  the  world. 

De  Soto  went  prepared  for  conquest  and  colonization.     His  force 
was  between  six  and  seven  hundred  men  —  some  say  a  thousand  — 

1  A  Relation  of  the  Invasion  and  Conquest  of  Florida  by  the  Spaniards,  under  the  Command 
of  Fernando  de  Soto.  Written  in  Portuguese  by  a  Gentleman  of  the  Town  of  the  Elvas.  This 
is  the  original  and  the  fullest  and  most  trustworthy  narrative  of  the  expedition  of  De  Soto 
There  have  been  several  translations,  the  first  by  Hakluyt  (vol.  iii.),  and  the  last  by 
Buckingham  Smith,  published  by  the  Bradford  Club.  We  rely  mainly  on  the  Relation 
but  comparing  Garcilaso  de  Vega,  Biedma,  and  Herrera. 


158         SPANISH  DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VII. 


with,  perhaps,  a  few  women  ;  among  them  were  a  number  of  priests 
Preparations  with  all  the  paraphernalia  of  their  office,  and  mechanics  with 
qure.sthofC°n"  the  instruments  of  their  trades.1  The  fleet  consisted  of  nine 
vessels,  ships,  caravels,  and  pinnaces  ;  and  besides  their 
human  freight  they  carried  between  two  and  three  hundred  horses, 


The   Muster  at   San    Lucar. 


The  ad 
venturers 
land  at 


a  large  herd  of  swine,  and  a  number  of  bloodhounds,  the  most  efficient 
ally  of  the  Spaniards  in  the  conquest  of  the  New  World.  The  em 
peror  appointed  De  Soto  governor  of  Cuba,  that  he  might  easily  ob 
tain  supplies  for  the  new  colony,  and  every  possible  facility  thus  be 
given  to  the  enterprise.  After  a  year's  preparation  in 
Spain  and  the  West  Indies  the  expedition  sailed  at  last 
Tampa  Bay.  from  Havana  on  the  18th  of  May,  1539,  and  on  the  30th 
the  troops  were  landed  at  Tampa  Bay. 

From  Tampa  Bay  the  adventurers  marched  into  the  interior,  pur 
suing  substantially  the  same  route  as  Narvaez  about  eleven  years 
before.  Within  the  first  few  days  De  Soto  had  the  good  fortune  to 
meet  with  a  Spaniard  who  had  been  captured  from  one  of  the  ships 
of  that  earlier  expedition  by  the  Indians,  and  in  his  long  captivity 
had  become  familiar  with  their  language.  The  romantic  story  of 
story  of  John  Smith  and  Pocahontas  was  in  part  anticipated  in  the 
Juan  Ortiz,  experience  of  this  man,  Juan  Ortiz.  When  first  captured 
by  a  band  whose  chief  was  named  Ucita,2  he  was  bound  hand  and 

1  De  Biedma's  narrative.     Herrcra  says,  nine  hundred  beside  the  sailors,  three  hundred 
and  thirty  horses  and  three  hundred  hogs. 

2  Portuguese  Relation.     Herrera  calls  him  Harrihiagua,  the  name  of  his  village. 


1539.] 


ADVENTURES   OF  JUAN  ORTIZ. 


159 


foot  to  stakes,  stretched  at  length  upon  a  scaffolding  beneath  which 
a  fire  was  kindled.  The  smoke  had  enwreathed  the  victim  and  the 
forked  flames  were  leaping  to  seize  the  naked  flesh,  when  the  intended 
holocaust  was  suddenly  interrupted  by  the  prayers  of  a  daughter  of 
the  chief.  She  besought  her  father  to  spare  the  life  of  the  Christian  ; 
one  such,  she  urged,  if  he  could  do  no  good  at  least  could  do  no  harm  ; 
and  she  made  a  cunning  appeal  to  the  vanity  of  the  chief  by  suggesting 
how  great  a  distinction  it  would  be  to  hold  a  white  man  as  a  captive. 
Her  prayers  were  listened  to ;  Ortiz  was  lifted  from  the  scaffold  and 
unbound,  to  serve  thenceforth  as  a  slave.  What  the  feeling  was  which 
the  sight  of  the  pale  stranger  had  aroused  in  the  bosom  of  the  dusky 
maiden,  or  what  the  relation  which  may  have  afterward  existed  be 
tween  them,  we  are  not  told ;  but  whether  it  was  on  her  part  mere 
pity  for  a  stranger,  or  a  tenderer  and  deeper  sentiment,  it  was  not 
forgotten.  Three  years  later  Ucita  was  defeated  in  a  petty  war  with 


Sacrifice  of  Juan  Ortiz. 


another  chieftain,  and  there  was  danger  that  Ortiz  would  be  sacrificed 
to  propitiate  the  devil  whose  anger,  Ucita  believed,  had  brought  this 
misfortune  upon  him  and  his  people.  Then  the  princess  came  again 
to  the  rescue  of  the  stranger  and  saved  him  from  probable  death. 
Warning  him  of  his  danger,  and  leading  him  secretly  and  alone  in 
the  night-time  beyond  the  boundaries  of  her  father's  village,  she  put 
him  in  the  way  to  find  the  camp  of  the  victorious  chieftain  who  had 
just  triumphed  over  her  father  and  would  protect,  she  knew,  the 
Christian  slave. 


SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VII. 

Ortiz,  when  years  afterwards  he  heard  that  his  countrymen  had 
arrived  in  Florida,  was  glad  enough  to  welcome  them,  while  he  did  not 
forget  that  he  had  some  cause  of  gratitude  to  his  Indian  friends.  As 
a  horseman  rode  at  him,  not  distinguishing  him  from  the  savages,  he 
cried  out :  "  Do  not  kill  me,  cavalier  ;  I  am  a  Christian  !  Do  not 
slay  these  people  ;  they  have  given  me  my  life  !  "  Fortunately  his 
appeal  was  heard  in  time,  and  to  him  the  expedition  was  more  in 
debted  than  to  any  other  man,  next  to  De  Soto  himself ;  for  through 
him  alone  was  it  possible  to  hold  any  intelligent  communication  with 
the  Indians,  whether  for  peace  or  war.  His  death,  which  occurred 
not  long  before  that  of  the  governor,  was  a  source  of  deep  perplexity 
and  "  a  great  cross  to  his  designs." 

When  De  Soto  turned  his  face  inward  he  sent  his  ships  back  to 
The  march  Cuba  for  provisions  to  return  at  an  appointed  time.  The 
army  toiled  painfully  through  the  woods  and  swamps  of 
Florida  from  spring  till  autumn.  The  provisions  they  brought  with 
them  were  soon  exhausted,  and  the  country  afforded  them  but  little 
support.  They  heard,  as  Narvaez  did  before  them,  of  Apalachen 
where  gold  abounded  ;  and  when  they  reached  the  spot  where,  ap 
palled  by  the  difficulties  before  him  and  the  poverty  of  the  country 
round  about,  he  had  turned  to  the  sea  for  refuge,  so  also  the  courage 
of  De  Soto's  men  gave  way  and  they  entreated  him  to  return.  But 
the  governor  declared  he  would  never  go  back  till  he  had  seen  with 
his  own  eyes  the  dangers  in  store  for  them  if  any  there  were. 

The  first  winter  was  passed  in  the  neighborhood  of  Apalachen 
Bay,  and  the  point  where  Narvaez  had  built  his  boats  and  whence  he 
started  on  his  fatal  voyage.  Communication  was  held  with  Cuba  ; 
arrangements  were  made  for  a  future  supply  of  provisions,  and 
twenty  Indian  women  were  sent  as  slaves  to  Dona  Isabella,  De 
Soto's  wife,  as  an  earnest  of  good  things  to  come. 

In  the  spring  they  pushed  northward,  and  in  April  they  were  still 

only  about  three  hundred  miles  from  Tampa  Bay.     To  the 

city  to  the      unhappy  natives  their  march  was  as  the  march  of  a  pesti- 

natives  ' 

lence.  The  news  of  their  coming  was  the  signal  for  war. 
The  cacique  of  every  tribe  they  met  was  compelled  to  pay  tribute  in 
maize  ;  to  supply  them  with  as  many  men  as  were  needed  for  per 
sonal  attendants  and  as  carriers  of  burdens  from  the  boundaries  of 
one  tribe  to  those  of  another  ;  and  that  the  service  might  be  faithfully 
done,  these  slaves  were  chained  in  couples,  neck  to  neck.  The  women 
they  took  both  for  servants  and  mistresses,  following  therein  the  ex 
ample  of  the  governor,  who  consoled  himself  for  the  absence  of  the 
Dona  Isabella  by  the  possession  of  not  less  than  two  of  the  comely 
Indian  girls,  the  daughters  of  caciques  or  others,  as  best  suited  his 


1540.]  DE   SOTO  IN   FLORIDA.  161 

inclination.  What  was  not  granted  through  fear  or  good-will  was 
taken  by  the  strong  hand  ;  and  in  either  case  the  result  was  the 
same  —  subjection  and  cruelty.  A  messenger  whose  message  was  not 
pleasing  carried  back  for  answer  to  his  master  the  bloody  stumps  of 
his  severed  hands  ;  amusement  was  combined  with  punishment  by 
setting  up  prisoners  as  targets  to  be  shot  at  with  arrows. 

Maize  they  now  often  found  in  abundance  in  the  fields  and  gran 
aries  of  the  Indians.  They  took  it,  or  it  was  given  to  them  Want  of 
• —  it  mattered  little  which.  But  they  suffered,  especially  food- 
the  sick,  for  the  need  of  salt  and  meat,  though  game,  in  the  season, 
was  plenty  and  the  natives  never  wanted  for  it.  The  woods  were 
alive  with  deer,  with  wild  turkeys,  and  partridges  ;  ducks  covered  the 
ponds ;  the  rivers  were  full  of  fish ;  but  the  Spaniards  lacked  the 
skill  either  to  entrap  or  to  kill  any  wild  thing  except  an  Indian. 
When  in  extremity,  the  adventurers  fed  upon  the  hogs  which  had 
been  produced  in  great  numbers  from  the  drove  brought  from  Cuba, 
and  which  had  thriven  on  the  plentiful  mast  of  the  forest ;  nor  did 
the  hungry  soldiers  disdain  to  eat  the  native  dogs  whenever  they 
could  get  them.  But  it  was  always  war,  and  always  a  struggle  for 
existence,  while  the  gold  they  were  searching  for  they  only  heard  of 
and  always  in  some  province  yet  to  be  reached.  Their  hopes  were 
fed,  however,  by  the  possession  of  great  quantities  of  pearls  —  fed, 
though  not  satisfied. 

In  April  of  the  second  spring  there  came  to  meet  the  governor  an 
Indian  queen,  or  cacica,  who  was  brought  to  the  bank  of  a 
river,  carried  in  a  litter  by  four  of  her  principal  subjects.     A   the  Indian 

.  .  -i    i     '         i  queen. 

barge,  over  whose  stern  was  a  canopy  supported  by  a  lance,- 
and  beneath  which  was  spread  a  carpet  and  cushions,  awaited  her. 
On  meeting  the  governor  she  took  from  her  own  neck  a  heavy 
string  of  pearls  and  threw  it  over  his,  presenting  him  beside  with 
mantles  of  feathers  and  thread  made  from  the  bark  of  trees.  Offering 
these,  with  many  protestations  of  welcome  and  good  will,  and  observ 
ing  the  eagerness  with  which  the  Spaniards  received  the  pearls,  and 
how  great  a  value  they  put  upon  them,  she  told  them  they  could  be 
found  in  large  quantities  in  the  graves  of  the  villages.  These  were 
speedily  rifled,  and  though  three  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  weight 
were  gathered  at  one  time,  they  proved  of  little  value,  as  they  had 
been  bored  by  some  heated  implement,  and  had  lost  their  lustre.  Nev 
ertheless  they  were  pearls,  and  the  hopes  and  the  cupidity  of  the  Span 
iards  were  excited  accordingly. 

In  the  province  of  this  cacica  many  of  the  people  would  have  been 
glad  to  remain  and  found  a  colony.  But  De  Soto,  who  was  an  "  in 
flexible  man  and  dry  of  word."  willing  enough  to  listen  to  advice  but 


162         SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VJ1. 


seldom  taking  it,  determined  to  push  on  ;  and  there  were  never  want 
ing  those  among  the  Indians  who  were  ready  to  answer  his  eager 
inquiries  for  gold  with  most  satisfactory  state 
ments,  anxious  to  see  him  depart  in  further 
search.  To  the  cacica,  who  gave  him  not  only 
pearls  and  mantles,  but  much  provision,  he 
made  a  return  not  unusual  with  him  for  gen 
erosity  and  kindness.  He  retained  her  as  a 
captive,  and  made  slaves  and  beasts  of  burden 
of  her  subjects ;  but  she  was  wary  enough  to 

evade  the  vigi- 
lance  of  her 
guards  Escapeof 
and  es-  thecacica- 
cape  into  the 
woods,  taking 
with  her  a  box 
full  of  pearls 
which  were  said 
to  be  of  great 
value.  Her  peo- 
ple  were  the 
most  civilized  of 
any  of  the  Flo- 
ridians  that  De 
Soto  met  with  in 
his  three  years' 
march,  for  they 

wore  shoes  and  clothing  made  from  skins  which  they  dressed  and 
colored  with  great  skill,  and  adorned  themselves  with  mantles,  made 
of  feathers,  or  in  a  textile  fabric  of  some  woody  fibre.  The  cacica's 
village  was  only  two  days'  journey  from  the  sea — the  Atlantic  coast 
—  at  the  point  where  Ayllon  had  landed  nearly  twenty  years  before. 
The  Indians  cherished  a  dagger  and  some  beads,  perhaps  a  rosary, 
which  they  said  came  from  some  of  Ayllon's  men. 

From  the  province  of  the  cacica  the  invaders  marched  northwest, 
and,  in  the  course  of  the  summer,  reached  the  neighborhood  of  the 
Appalachian  chain.  They  had  seen  among  the  Indians  some  little 
axes  of  copper  which  were  supposed  to  contain  a  mixture  of 
gold  ;  and  the  process  of  smelting  ores,  as  practised  among 
the  people  where  they  were  mined,  was  described  with  great  accuracy. 
Had  the  Spaniards  pushed  forward  at  the  point  they  had  now  reached 
they  would  have  found  what  they  were  in  search  of,  though  not  in 


The    Indian   Queen. 


Indications 
of  gold. 


1540.J 


DE   SOTO   AT  MAVILLA. 


163 


large  quantities.  But  an  exploring  party  pronounced  the  mountains 
impassable,  and  fortunately  for  the  natives,  whose  fate,  in  case  of  dis 
covery  would  have  been  to  gather  gold  as  slaves,  or  resistance  to 
death,  the  Spaniards  lacked  either  the  skill  or  the  diligence  to  trace 
the  evidences  of  the  existence  of  metals.  De  Soto  therefore  turned 
south  again  with  his  little  army  of  marauders,  and  wandered  the  rest 
of  the  summer  in  the  valleys  of  the  streams  emptying  into  Mobile 
Bay. 

In  October  they  reached  Mavilla,  a  village  which  has  given  its 
name  to  the  river  and  city  of  Mobile.  The  country  round  about,  as 
well  as  that  through  which  they  had  been  wandering  for  weeks,  was 
populous,  and  they 
had  done  nothing 
to  conciliate,  every 
thing  to  exasperate 
the  natives.  Ma- 
villa  was  a  place  of 
importance,  con 
taining  many 
houses,  and  s  u  r- 
rounded  with  pal 
isades  ;  it  was  soon 
evident  that  its 
possession  was  not 
to  be  yielded  with 
out  a  Struggle.  Palisaded  Town.  [From  De  Bry.] 

The  governor  and  a  few  attendants  entered ;  the  cacique,  who  was 
with  him,  took  refuge  in  a  house,  and,  deaf  both  to  entreaties  and 
threats,  defied  him.  It  was  easy  enough  to  provoke  an  outbreak. 
A  Spaniard  replied  to  some  haughty  words  from  a  chief  by  laying  his 
back  open  with  a  cutlass,  and  all  the  Indians  sprung  to  their  Battle  with 
bows  and  arrows.  Every  house  was  an  ambuscade,  and  be-  thenatlves- 
fore  the  Christians  could  fly  to  the  fields  five  of  them  were  slain. 
Among  those  who  escaped  was  De  Soto,  who,  forming  his  troops, 
at  once  invested  the  town,  and  led  the  assault,  the  soldiers  carrying 
their  arms  in  one  hand  and  a  torch  in  the  other.  The  defence  was 
brave,  desperate,  and  useless.  A  contest  between  naked  savages  and 
men,  many  of  whom  were  mounted,  and  all  were  in  armor,  was 
rather  a  hunting-chase  than  a  battle.  Twenty-five  hundred  of  the 
Indians  were  speedily  put  to  the  sword,  or  were  driven  to  torture 
and  death  by  suffocation  in  the  smoke  and  flames  of  their  own 
houses  ;  of  the  Spaniards,  eighteen  only  were  killed,  and  one  hun 
dred  and  fifty  received  arrow  wounds  from  which  they  quickly  recov- 


164  SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.   [CHAP.  VII. 

ered.1  Their  most  serious  loss  was  of  the  property  destroyed  by  the 
fire,  for  at  the  first  desperate  onset,  before  the  Spaniards  had  time  to 
rally,  the  chains  of  the  captives  were  stricken  off  and  their  burdens 
taken  within  the  palisades. 

De  Soto  was  now,  as  he  learned  from  the  Indians,  within  six  days  of 
Pensacola  (Ochuse),  where  some  of  his  ships  awaited  news  of  him. 
But  he  concealed  the  fact  from  his  own  men,  lest  they  should  desert 
him,  and  held  no  communication  with  the  ships,  for  he  preferred  that 
as  yet  there  should  be  no  tidings  sent  to  Cuba  of  the  expedition.  His 
pearls,  the  only  thing  of  value  he  had  found,  were  all  lost ;  he  had 
little  else  to  report  than  continued  misfortune,  and  that  in  his  two 
years'  wanderings  he  had  lost  more  than  a  hundred  men.  After  a 
month's  stay  at  Mavilla,  he  again  moved  farther  into  the  interior  till 
he  reached  the  upper  part  of  the  State  of  Mississippi,  where  he  went 
The  span-  mt°  winter  quarters  on  the  banks  of  the  Yazoo  River.  The 
winter0  mt°  country  was  populous,  and  the  maize  was  plentiful ;  there 
quarters.  \yas,  thei'efore,  no  lack  of  food.  But  the  cold  was  severe, 
the  snow  covered  the  ground,  and  whether  on  the  march  or  in  camp 
hostilities  with  the  Indians  never  ceased.  There  was  constant  aggres 
sion  on  one  side  ;  constant  retaliation  on  the  other.  In  March  a  night 
attack  was  made  upon  the  camp  of  the  Spaniards  which  was  more 
disastrous  to  them  than  the  fight  at  Mavilla.  All  that  was  saved 
from  the  burning  at  that  place  was  lost  in  this.  Twelve  Spaniards 
were  killed ,  fifty  horses  and  four  hundred  hogs  perished  in  the  flames ; 
while  on  the  other  side  the  loss  was  only  one  man  and  one  woman. 
In  the  confusion  and  suddenness  of  the  attack  and  the  fire,  the  soldiers 
lost  nearly  all  their  clothing,  as  well  as  their  arms,  saddles,  and  other 
property,  leaving  them  for  some  days  so  destitute  and  miserable,  that, 
"  had  the  Indians,"  says  the  narrative,  "  returned  the  second  night, 
they  might,  with  little  effort,  have  overpowered  us." 2  The  losses, 
however,  were  in  a  few  days  repaired,  so  far  as  was  possible,  by  the 
forging  of  new  swords  and  the  making  of  new  spears  and  saddles. 
Skins  had  to  be  substituted  for  clothing,  and  mats  of  dried  grass  for 
blankets. 

In  the  course  of  the  spring  and  summer  the  army  crossed  the  State 
of  Mississippi  diagonally  from  the  southeast  to  the  northwest  corner 
till  they  reached  the  great  river  —  the  Mississippi,  which  the  Span 
iards  called  the  Rio  Grande  —  at  about  the  thirty-fifth  degree  of  lat 
itude,  or  the  boundary  line  between  the  States  of  Mississippi  and  Ten- 

1  Portuguese  Relation.     Herrera  says  (Decade  IV.,  book  vii.,  chap.  4)  that  the  Spanish 
Joss  was  eighty-three  men,  and  that  of  the  Indians  eleven  thousand,  four  thousand  of  whom 
were  burnt  to  death. 

2  Portuguese  Relation. 


1541.] 


DISCOVERY  OF   THE  MISSISSIPPI. 


165 


nessee.     "  This  river  in  that  place  was  half  a  league  over,  so  that  a 
man  could  not  be  distinguished  from  one  side  to  the  other  ; 
it  was  very  deep  and  very  rapid,  and  being  always  full  of  thTjiS-0 
trees  and  timber  that  was  carried  down  by  the  force  of  the 
stream,  the   water    was  thick   and  very  rnuddy.     It  abounded  with 
fish,  most  of  which  differed  much  from  those  that  are  taken  in  the 
rivers  of  Spain."     Boats  were  necessary  to  cross,  and  it  took  a  month 
to  build  them. 

A  great  cacique,  Aquixo,  was  lord  of  the  country  on  the  other  side 
of  the  Mississippi,  and  in  a  day  or  two  he  approached  to  meet  visit  of  the 
the  strangers.     He  came  with  an  imposing  array  of  two  hun-  caci(iue- 
dred  canoes,  filled  with  armed  men,  a  part  of  whom  stood  up  to  pro 
tect  the  rowers  with  feathered  shields,  but  all  with  their  bodies  and 
faces  painted,  their  heads  adorned  with  plumes  of  many  colors.     The 


cacique  and  other  chiefs  were  sheltered 
under  awnings.  "  The  canoes  were 
most  neatly  made  and  very  large,  and, 
with  their  pavilions,  feathers,  shields, 
and  standards,  looked  like  a  fleet  of 

,,,,_,,,,  ,,  Fleet  of  the  Cacique. 

galleys.        J-hey    brought    presents   ot 

fish  and  fruit  and  bread,  and  came,  they  said,  to  welcome  and  do 
homage  to  the  strangers.  But  the  strangers  chose  to  believe  that 
they  had  a  hostile  purpose  ;  when  they  hesitated  to  land  the  Span- 


166         SPANISH  DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [€HAP.  VIL 

iards  killed  five  or  six  of  them  for  such  a  want  of  confidence,  and 
others  who  attempted  to  make  a  landing  they  fell  upon  as  coming 
with  evil  intent. 

When  the  boats  were  finished  the  army  crossed  without  opposition. 
For  a  few  days  they  kept  along  the  west  bank  of  the  river,  making 
their  way  with  difficulty  through  the  forest  and  wet  bottom  lands,  and 
harassed  by  constant  attacks  from  the  Indians.  But  they  reached,  ere 
long,  a  higher  and  dryer  country,  where  they  remained  for  more  than 
a  month,  and  where  they  found  artificial  hills,  on  which  the  caciques 
piety  of  the  sometimes  put  their  houses.1  On  one  of  these  De  Soto  set 
Spaniards.  Up  &  GTOSS  when  two  blind  men  were  brought  to  him  to  be 
cured,  and  instead  of  healing  he  gave  a  homily  to  the  assembled 
heathen  on  the  mystery  of  the  atonement.  The  simple  natives  knelt 
in  imitation  of  the  Spaniards  at  the  foot  of  the  cross,  and  De  Soto 
admonished  them  "  to  honor  and  adore  it,  and  demand  of  the  Lord 
who  was  in  Heaven  all  that  they  might  stand  in  need  of."  Not  long 
after  De  Soto  accepted  as  a  present  from  a  chief  his  two  sisters,  "  both 
handsome  and  well-shaped,"  with  a  request  that  the  governor  would 
make  them  his  wives.  But  women  with  that  tribe  were  as  cheap  as 
morality  was  with  the  Spaniards ;  they  were  purchased  for  a  shirt  a 
piece. 

It  is  not  clear  how  far  north  and  west  the  expedition  marched  dur 
ing  this  summer,  as  the  narratives  are  obscure  and  sometimes  con 
flicting.  While  the  larger  part  of  the  force  remained  through  a  por 
tion  of  June  and  all  of  July  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Mississippi, 
a  reconnoitering  party  was  sent  into  the  interior,  which  when 
limit  of  the  it  returned  almost  in  a  starving  condition,  reported  that  the 
country  was  poor  and  barren.  They  learned  that  further 
north  there  were  very  few  people,  but  many  cattle  —  bisons.  The 
robes  of  these  animals  they  procured  at  different  times  from  the 
Indians,  "  which  were  very  convenient  against  the  cold  of  that  country 
because  they  made  a  good  furr,  the  hair  of  them  being  as  soft  as 
sheep's  wool."  But  the  progress  of  the  main  body  seems  to  have  been 
generally  south  west  ward,  crossing  the  St.  Francis  and  the  White 
rivers,  marching  through  a  country  fertile,  well-watered,  and  thickly 
inhabited,  as  far  as  the  present  site  of  Little  Rock,  in  Arkansas. 
They  found  and  used  the  saline  springs  of  that  State,  and  finally  went 
into  winter  quarters  on  the  banks  of  a  river  which  may  have  been 

1  "  The  caciques  of  this  country  make  a  custom  of  raising,  near  their  dwellings,  very  high 
hills,  on  which  they  sometimes  build  their  huts.  On  one  of  these  we  planted  the  cross,  and 
went  with  much  devotion  on  our  knees  to  kiss  the  foot  of  it."  A  Narrative  of  the  Expedi 
tion  of  Hernando  de  Soto.  By  Luis  Hernandez  de  Biedma.  Historical  Collections  of  Louis 
iana.  By  B.  F.  French,  1850,  p.  105.  These  hills  were  no  doubt  the  "mounds"  of  the 
earlier  people,  but  which  the  Spaniards  naturally  supposed  were  raised  by  the  Indians. 


1542.]  DEATH   OF   DE   SOTO.  167 

either  the  White  or  the  Arkansas.  Near  by,  the  Indians  had  re 
ported,  was  a  great  lake  which,  it  was  supposed,  might  be  an  arm  of 
the  sea ;  and  De  Soto  hoped  to  reopen  communication  in  the  spring 
with  Cuba,  and  procure  reinforcements,  of  which  he  was  in  great  need. 
He  had  lost  in  his  three  years'  wanderings  two  hundred  and  fifty  men 
and  one  hundred  and  fifty  horses  ;  and  since  his  first  winter  at  Ap- 
palachee  Bay  no  tidings  had  been  sent  to  the  Dona  Isabella  whether 
he  were  alive  or  dead. 

That  he  was  dead  was  to  be  her  next  news  of  him.  With  the 
spring  the  march  was  resumed,  and  its  sole  object  now  was  to  reach 
the  sea.  Communication  with  the  Indians  had  become  more  difficult, 
for  Ortiz  had  died  in  the  course  of  the  winter.  The  Indians,  obser 
ving  the  weakness  and  perplexities  of  the  Spaniards,  were  more  defiant 
than  any  of  their  tribes  had  hitherto  been.  A  haughty  cacique  sent 
word  to  De  Soto  that  his  boast  of  being  the  son  of  the  Sun  would  be 
accepted  when  he  was  seen  to  dry  up  the  great  river ;  that  meanwhile 
it  was  not  the  custom  of  him  who  sent  this  message  to  visit  inferiors  ; 
if  the  stranger  wished  to  see  him  he  was  always  at  home  ;  if  he  came 
in  peace  he  would  find  a  welcome ;  if  with  hostile  intentions  the  chief 
was  equally  ready  for  him.  De  Soto  was  in  no  condition  to  punish  or 
resent  this  defiance.  An  expedition  that  was  sent  down  the  river  to 
find  the  sea,  returned  and  reported  that  in  eight  days  journey  they 
could  make  but  little  progress,  for  the  country  was  full  of  swamps  and 
dense  forests,  and  that  the  river  with  many  bends  ran  far  up  into  the 
land. 

Worn  down  with  hardships,  anxiety,  disappointment,  and  despair, 
De  Soto  sank  under  this  accumulation  of  misfortunes.  Con-  Death  of 
,  scious  of  approaching  death,  he  called  the  principal  officers  De  Soto- 
of  the  expedition  about  him.  He  told  them  he  was  dying ;  he  thanked 
them  for  the  fidelity  and  affection  they  had  always  shown  him,  and 
regretted  that  he  had  not  been  able  to  reward  them  as  he  had  always 
hoped  to  do,  and  according  to  their  deserts  ;  he  asked  pardon  of  all 
who  believed  they  had  cause  of  offence  against  him,  and  as  a  last 
favor  he  begged  they  would  in  his  presence  choose  a  leader  to  take  his 
place,  that  he  might  leave  them  without  fear  of  dissensions  to  arise 
after  he  was  gone.  They  asked  him  to  appoint  his  own  successor, 
and  he  named  Luis  Moscoso  de  Alvarado,  whom  they  all  swore  to 
obey.  The  next  day,  the  21st  of  May,  1542,  he  died. 

It  was  thought  wise  to  conceal  his  death  from  the  Indians,  for  he 

D  7 

had  assured  them  not  only  that  he  was  the  son  of  the  Sun, 

but  that  Christians  could  not  die.     The  new  governor  ordered  in  the  Great 

River. 

him  to  be  buried  secretly  in  the  gateway  of  the  camp.     But 

the   suspicions  of  the  natives,  who  had  seen  him  sick,  were  aroused 


168         SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VII. 

He  was  no  longer  visible,  but  they  saw  a  new-made  grave,  and  gath 
ering  about  it  looked  down  with  curious  eyes  and  in  solemn,  whis 
pered  consultation  upon  the  mysterious  heap  of  earth.  Then  Moscoso 
ordered  the  body  to  be  disinterred  with  great  precaution  in  the  dead 
of  night,  and,  the  mantles  in  which  it  was  wrapped  being  made  heavy 
with  sand,  it  was  dropped  silently  and  in  the  darkness  in  the  iniddle 
of  the  deep  waters  of  the  Mississippi.  And  when  the  cacique  of 


Guachoya  came  to  Moscoso  and  said :  "  What  has  been  done  with  my 
brother  and  lord,  the  Governor  ?  "  The  answer  was,  "  He  has  ascended 
into  the  skies  for  a  little  while  and  will  soon  be  back."  : 

Either  De  Soto  misunderstood  this  Luis  de  Moscoso  or  history  has 
Luis  de  belied  him.  It  is  said  that  he  loved  a  life  of  ease  and  gayety 
MOSCOSO.  -n  a  Chmtian  land,  rather  than  one  of  toil  and  hardship 
and  self-denial  in  the  discovery  and  subjection  of  strange  countries. 
But  Avhether  he  believed  that  longer  persistence  in  an  enterprise, 
now  in  its  fourth  year,  whose  sole  fruits  had  been  death  and  disaster, 
was  foolhardiness,  or  whether  he  wanted  the  energy  and  boldness  to 
pursue  it  and  achieve  success,  he  decided  at  once  to  lead  his  com 
panions  back  to  Cuba  if  he  could  find  the  way.  When  this  was 
announced  and  council  called  to  consult  as  to  the  best  direction  to 
pursue,  there  were  many  who  were  glad  that  De  Soto  was  quiet  in  his 
loaded  mantles  at  the  bottom  of  the  great  river.  With  him  the  enter 
prise  could  have  ended  only  with  his  and  their  lives,  and  they  rejoiced 
that  he  was  taken  and  they  left. 

1  Herrera  says  th.it  the  body  was  inclosed  in  the  trunk  of  an  oak  hollowed  out  for  the 
purpose,  and  sunk  "  in  the  middle  of  the  river,  where  it  was  a  quarter  of  a  league  ovec 
and  nineteen  fathoms  deep." 


1542.]  RETREAT   OF   DE   SOTO'S  MEN.  169 

The  determination  was  to  seek  their  countrymen,  as  Cabe^a  de 
Vaca  had  done,  on  the  Pacific  coast.  Through  the  summer  and  au 
tumn  they  straggled  west  and  south,  east  and  north,  as  they  The  Span. 
were  led  by  some  vague  rumor  or  vaguer  hope.  Every-  ^tumTkt° 
where  they  inquired  the  way  to  the  sea  ;  but  they  met  with  Cuba- 
no  Indians  who  had  ever  seen  it.  Everywhere  they  asked  if  Chris 
tians  had  not  visited  that  region ;  and  when  the  Indians  answered,  No, 
they  sometimes  put  them  to  the  torture  and  extorted  false  confessions, 
which  only  misled  the  Spaniards  with  some  new  delusion.  Enemies 
waylaid  them  with  that  stealthiness  which  only  Indians  are  capable 
of  ;  guides  misled  them  with  that  cunning  which  the  Indian  counts 
as  one  of  his  chief  virtues  ;  hunger,  sickness,  insubordination,  con 
fusion  well  nigh  bordering  on  despair,  so  beset  them,  that  it  seemed 
they  could  never  escape  unless  God  should  be  pleased  to  work  mira 
cles  on  their  behalf.  Once  more,  in  the  early  winter,  they  turned 
back  to  the  great  river  for  a  last  effort  to  save  themselves. 

A  few  miles  above  the  mouth  of  the  Arkansas,  where  the  timber 
was  the  largest  they  had  seen,  they  built,  in  the  course  of  Building  the 
the  next  six  months,  seven  brigantines.  The  maize  which  tote"1*"163- 
the  Indians  had  stored  in  two  neighboring  villages  the  Spaniards 
seized  for  their  own  support  meanwhile.  From  the  chains  struck  from 
the  slaves,  from  shot,  from  their  stirrups,  and  whatever  else  of  iron 
the  camp  afforded,  they  forged  the  requisite  nails  and  spikes.  The 
bark  of  the  mulberry  tree  was  twisted  into  cordage,  and  from  the  fibre 
of  a  plant  like  hemp  they  made  oakum.  The  natives  supplied  them 
with  mantles  of  matting  for  sails,  and  this  was  held  as  a  special  inter 
position  of  Divine  Providence,  "  disposing  the  Indians  to  bring  the  gar 
ments  ;  otherwise  there  had  been  no  way  but  to  go  and  fetch  them." 
They  did  not,  however,  trust  to  Providence  alone ,  for  when  the  Chris 
tians  had,  or  thought  they  had,  reason  to  suspect  that  the  Indians  were 
coming  with  a  hostile  purpose,  under  a  pretence  of  bringing  presents, 
they  killed  some  of  the  messengers,  cut  off  the  noses  and  the  hands 
of  others  and  sent  them  back  to  the  caciques.  This  conciliatory 
measure  had  the  desired  effect,  and  the  Indians  brought  and  offered 
with  great  eagerness  everything  in  their  possession  that  would  hasten 
the  departure  of  such  guests.  The  maize  of  which  they  had  been 
robbed  was  the  chief  food  of  these  poor  creatures,  and  for  want  of  it 
they  would  often  fall  dead  "  of  clear  hunger  and  debility"  about  the 
camp  where  they  came  to  beg.  The  governor  ordered,  under  heavy 
penalties,  that  nothing  should  be  given  them  to  appease  their  hunger ; 
but  to  the  credit  of  his  men  the  orders  were  not  rigidly  obeyed,  for 
"  the  Christians,  seeing  that  even  the  hogs  had  their  bellies  full,  and 
that  these  poor  Indians  came  and  took  so  much  pains  to  serve  them, 


170         SPANISH  DISCOVERIES   AND   EXPLORATIONS.     [CHAP.  VIL 

and  whose  extreme  misery  they  could  not  but  pity,  charitably  gave 
them  of  the  maes  they  had,  " —  a  weakness  they  reproached  themselves 
for  after  wai'd,  when  they  loaded  their  vessels  with  stores  for  the 
voyage  and  had  room  for  more. 

These  boats  were  finished  in  June.     Most  of  the  horses  and  all  the 
hogs  were  killed  for  provisions,  and  on  the  2d  of  July,  1543, 

down  the  the  expedition,  reduced  now  to  three  hundred  and  seventy- 
Mississippi. 

two  persons,  embarked  for  the  voyage  down  the  Mississippi. 

They  were  seventeen  days  in  reaching  the  mouth  of  the  river,  fighting 


Departure  of  the   Spaniards. 

their  way  on  the  water  as  they  had  always  done  on  the  land,  for  the 
Indians  grew  the  more  aggressive  with  the  hope  that  they  were  seeing 
the  last  of  the  hated  white  men.  Sailing  out  into  the  Gulf,  pursued 
to  the  last  moment  by  the  natives,  they  cruised  for  fifty  days  along 
the  coast  of  Louisiana  and  Texas,  till  they  reached  the  Spanish  colony 
of  Panuco.  Haggard,  gaunt,  half -naked,  having  only  a  scanty  cover 
ing  of  skins,  looking  more  like  wild  beasts  than  men,  they  kissed  the 
ground  when  they  landed  among  their  countrymen,  and  "  on  bended 
knees,  with  hands  raised  above  them,  and  their  eyes  to  heaven  re 
mained  untiring  in  giving  thanks  to  God." 

But  the  relation  of  such  hardships  as  these  men  endured,  fol 
lowing  upon  the  almost  complete  extermination  that  befell  the  Nar- 
vaez  expedition,  could  not  deter  their  countrymen  from  further  ex 
plorations  in  the  same  direction.  It  could  not  be  forgotten  that  a 


1559.]  DON   TRISTAN   DE  LUNA.  171 

great  country,  still  in  the  possession  of  savage  heathens,  stretched  from 
the  Atlantic  coast,  along  which  Gomez,  Lucas  Vasquez  de  Ayllon, 
and  Ponce  de  Leon  had  sailed,  to  that  Western  —  or  as  it  was  then 
called,  Southern  —  Ocean,  reached  by  Cabeca  de  Vaca,  and  his  three 
companions,  after  six  years'  wanderings.  De  Soto  slept  quietly,  after 
three  years  of  travel,  at  the  bottom  of  a  river,  broad  and  deep,  hun 
dreds  of  miles  from  its  mouth,  and  no  man  could  tell  how  far  the  land 
watered  by  it  and  its  tributaries  extended. 

So  vast  a  field  for  enterprise,  and  so  full  of  magnificent  promise, 
notwithstanding  the  fate  of  all  who  had  hitherto  entered  it,  could  not 
long  remain  neglected.  Yet  in  spite  of  its  inviting  name,  The  Land  of 
Flowers  continued  most  inhospitable  to  all  attempts  on  the  part  of  the 
Spaniards  to  gain  a  foothold  there.  An  expedition,  led  by  some  zeal 
ous  friars,  eager  for  the  conversion  of  the  heathen,  landed  on  its  shores* 
and  were  massacred  as  soon  as  they  set  foot  thereon.  Twice  within 
the  ten  years  following  De  Soto's  expedition,  a  fleet  of  ships,  crowded 
with  adventurers,  and  richly  laden  with  treasure  from  Mexico,  were 
wrecked  on  its  coast,  and  those  on  board  who  escaped  the  perils  of 
the  sea  were  slaughtered  by  the  natives,  leaving  barely  enough  alive  to 
tell  the  story  of  their  disaster.  Occasionally  a  solitary  survivor  of  one 
of  these  ill-fated  enterprises  returned  to  the  Spanish  settlements  in 
Mexico,  or  the  West  Indies,  to  recount  his  romantic  adventures. 
Hardly  an  expedition,  after  that  of  Ponce  de  Leon  had  first  landed 
at  Florida,  failed  to  meet  somewhere  among  the  Indians,  a  white  cap 
tive  of  their  own  race  who  had  belonged  to  some  previous  company  of 
explorers,  and  who,  taken  captive  by  the  Indians,  had  been  spared  to 
slavery,  after  his  companions  were  slain.  Their  story  would  be  no 
less  romantic  than  that  of  CabeQa  de  Vaca,  or  of  Juan  Ortiz,  if,  like 
them,  it  had  gained  a  chronicler. 

It  was  exactly  twenty  years  after  the  imposing  departure  of  De  Soto 
from  San  Lucar,  that  a  fleet  of  still  larger  size,  and  no  less 

•  r>  '  f  TT  /"i  ~\ir  Expedition 

magnificence  than  his,  was  fitted  up  at  Vera  Cruz,  in  Mexico,  of  Don  Tris- 
for  the  conquest  and  settlement  of  Florida.  It  was  com 
manded  by  Don  Tristan  de  Luna,  a  scion  of  a  noble  family  in  Arragon, 
whose  father  was  for  several  years  a  governor  of  Yucatan.  He  sailed 
from  Vera  Cruz  on  the  14th  of  August,  1559,  with  an  army  of  1500 
men,  besides  many  friars  zealous  for  the  conversion  of  the  Indians, 
and  a  number  of  women  and  children,  the  families  of  the  soldiers  who 
were  to  colonize  Florida.  They  had  a  prosperous  voyage  to  a  good 
harbor,  which  they  named  the  Santa  Maria.1  Here  they  anchored 
the  ships,  and  Don  Tristan  prepared  to  send  news  of  his  arrival  back 

1  Hist,  of  Florida,  by  G.  E.  Fairbanks,  says  this  was  Pensacola  Bay,  as  the  old  Spanish 
maps  gave  the  Bay  as  the  Santa  Maria. 


172         SPANISH   DISCOVERIES   AND    EXPLORATIONS.      [CHAP.  VII. 

to  the  viceroy.  But  the  accustomed  ill- fortune  of  Spanish  adventurers 
in  these  parts  attended  him.  On  the  sixth  day  after  his  arrivalT 
a  great  storm  arose,  and  all  his  ships  were  driven  on  shore  and  de 
stroyed.  Left  on  the  land  with  his  great  army  with  no  means  of  return 
ing  to  Mexico,  he  at  once  sent  out  a  detachment  of  soldiers,  under  his 
sergeant-major,  to  explore  the  country,  and  seek  for  the  rich  provinces 
of  which  they  had  heard,  while  he  remained  at  the  port  with  the  rest 
of  his  people. 

The   detachment,  after  a  march  of  forty  days  through  a  country 
empty  of  people  and  barren  of  provisions,  reached  an  Indian 

Exploration  L    J       ,.,-,, 

of  the  coun-  town,  which,  although  deserted,  contained  a  quantity  of  corn, 
beans,  and  other  vegetables.  Most  of  the  natives  had  run 
away  on  their  approach,  but  they  found  a  few  bolder  ones  still  lurking 
about  the  village,  and  conciliated  them  with  presents  of  beads  and  rib 
bons.  From  these  they  learned  that  the  town  had  been  very  large  and 
well  peopled,  but  had  been  attacked  by  men  like  themselves,  who  had 
destroyed  and  driven  away  the  inhabitants.  These  same  strange  inva 
ders  had  caused  the  general  desolation  of  the  country,  and  the  abandon 
ment  of  the  villages  which  they  had  seen  on  the  march.  Refreshing 
himself  and  his  men  on  the  provisions,  which  seemed  abundant,  the 
sergeant-major  sent  back  a  party  of  sixteen  to  report  to  De  Luna.  In 
their  absence,  De  Luna,  who  had  lost  a  large  part  of  his  provisions  in 
the  shipwreck,  was  greatly  distressed  for  want  of  food,  and  anxious  for 
the  safety  of  the  sergeant-major.  He  was  preparing  to  set  out  in  search 
of  him,  when  his  messengers  arrived,  and  he  at  once  started  to  join 
the  advance  with  his  train  of  a  thousand  men,  women,  and  children. 
Guided  by  the  sixteen  soldiers,  they  reached  the  Indian  town,  and  for 
a  short  time  feasted  on  the  food  they  found  there.  But  the  supplies, 
which  had  seemed  so  inexhaustible  to  the  first-comers,  were  soon  con 
sumed  by  the  great  numbers.  The  suffering  that  ensued  was  most 
severe.  They  were  forced  to  eat  bitter  acorns,  and  even  the  bark  and 
leaves  of  the  young  trees.  A  party  was  sent  out  again  to  find  if  they 
could  discover  any  relief,  or  see  anything  of  the  rich  town  of  Coga, 
of  which  the  Indians  told  them.  These  were  forced  on  their  march 
to  eat  their  pack-mules,  and  then  the  leather  of  their  straps,  and 
their  gun-covers.  Their  lives  were  preserved  by  their  entrance  into 
a  wood  of  chestnut  and  walnut  trees,  where  they  surfeited  themselves 
on  the  abundant  fruit. 

De  Luna  awaited  their  return,  till  the  sight  of  his  people  dying  of 
hunger  made  him  resolve  to  return  to  the  port  -of  Santa  Maria.  He 
reached  there  after  much  suffering,  and  was  soon  followed  by  the  ex 
ploring  party,  who  brought  back  still  more  unfavorable  reports  of  the 
sterility  and  poverty  of  the  country.  They  had  found  none  of  the 


1561.]  SPANISH   FAILURES   IN  NORTH   AMERICA.  173 

noble  cities,  rich  in  gold  and  silver,  with  people  clothed  in  garments 
of  silk  and  cloth  of  the  Indies,  of  which  they  had  heard  reports. 
Instead,  they  saw  only  desolate  lands,  and  villages  deserted  even  by 
the  savage  inhabitants,  who  had  learned  to  flee  on  the  approach  of 
the  white  man. 

At  the  port  De  Luna  procured  two  small  vessels,  either  built  from 
the  remains  of  the  wreck,  or  else  preserved  from  the  storm 
which  had  destroyed  the  larger  ships.     These  he  sent  back  ***£•  en- 
to  the  viceroy,  with  appeal  for  succor.     Relief  came  in  the 
shape  of  two  ships,  well  provisioned,  prepared  to  take  away  the  un 
happy  colony,  now  distracted  with  misery,  discontent,  and  anarchy. 
Tristan  de  Luna  at  first  refused  to   abandon  his  enterprise,  and  in 
sisted  on  being  left  behind  with  a  few  followers.     But  he  was  recalled 
by  the  Viceroy,  and  at  last  returned  to  Mexico  in  1561,  about  two 
years  from  the  time  of  his  first  setting  out.     Thus  ended  the  most  care 
fully  prepared   and  most   promising  attempt  ever  made  to  colonize 
Florida  by  the  Spaniards.     Fortunately  for  the  progress  of  the  human 
race,  and  the  future  history  of  North  America,  all  their  efforts  to  gain 
a  permanent  foothold  north  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  were  in  the  main 
unsuccessful. 


Fishing  Fleet  at  Newfoundland. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 


FKENCH   DISCOVERIES    AND   ATTEMPTS   AT   COLONIZATION. 

BRETON  FISHERMEN  ON  NEWFOUNDLAND  BANKS. —  GIOVANNI  DA  VERRAZANO  FIRST 
ENTERS  NEW  YORK  HARBOR.  —  JACQUES  CARTIER  SENT  ON  AN  AMERICAN  EXPE 
DITION. —  EXPLORATION  OF  THE  ST.  LAWRENCE  RIVER.  —  CARTIER'S  VISIT  TO 
THE  INDIAN  TOWN  OF  HOCHELAGA. —  VOYAGE  OF  FRANCIS  DE  LA  ROQUE,  LORD 

OF  ROBERVAL.  THE   HUGUENOTS    SEEK  AN   ASYLUM    IN  AMERICA. THE  CoL- 

ONY  OF  ADMIRAL  COLIGNY.  —  JOHN  RIBAULT  GOES  TO  FLORIDA.  —  SETTING  UP 
THE  ARMS  OF  FRANCE.  —  LAUDONNIERE  COMMANDS  A  SECOND  ENTERPRISE.  — 
BUILDING  OF  FORT  CAROLINE.  —  PROGRESS  OF  THE  COLONY. 

As  early  as  1504,  the  hardy  fishermen  of  various  nations  had  fol 
lowed  the  Cabots  and  Cortereals  across  the  Atlantic,  and  were  tossing 
all  the  summer  through  in  their  little  vessels  on  the  Grand  Banks, 
and  along  the  coasts  of  Newfoundland  and  Nova  Scotia.  It  was  only 
to  sail  a  few  degrees  more  to  the  westward  than  their  fathers  had  done, 
for  it  is  certain  that  the  mariners  of  England,  of  Brittany,  Nor 
mandy,  and  the  Bay  of  Biscay  had  approached,  if  they  had  not  seen, 
the  Western  continent,  long  before  its  discovery  by  either  Columbus 
or  Cabot.  It  is  not  at  all  unlikely  that  they  may  have  explored  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  harbors,  rivers,  and  islands  along  the  shores  of 
New  England,  whose  discovery  has  been  the  subject  of  controversy 
on  behalf  of  this  or  that  early  navigator  of  distinction,  for  nearly  three 
hundred  years.  But  of  what  they  did  there  is  no  record  ;  content 
with  finding  good  fishing  ground,  any  other  knowledge  they  may 


1523.]  FRENCH  FISHERMEN.  175 

have  gained  excited  little  interest  beyond  their  own  limited  circle  of 
humble  people,  too  ignorant  and  too  busy  to  trouble  themselves  or 
others  with  geographical  conjectures.  The  practical  question  of  lib 
erty  to  fish  in  the  newly-discovered  seas,  was  all  they  cared  for,  and 
that  they  settled  among  themselves. 

Some  of  these  Breton  fishermen  gave  a  name  —  Cape  Breton  —  to 
an  island;  in  1506,  John  Denys,  of  Honfleur,  explored  the 
Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence  ;  two  years  afterward,  Thomas  Aubert,   of  French 
a  pilot  of  Dieppe,  visited,  it  is  supposed,  Cape  Breton  Island, 
and  carried  some  of  the  natives  thence  to  France  ; l  and  in  1518,  the 
Baron  de  Leri  proposed  to  settle  a  colony  on  Sable  Island,2  but  only 
landed  some  cattle,  whose  progeny,  eighty  years  later,  served  to  feed 
some  miserable  Frenchmen  left  there  by  the  Marquis  de  la  Roche. 
But  all  these,  like  the  fishing  voyages,  were  private  enterprises. 

Spain,  notwithstanding  the  marvellous  splendor  of  her  conquests 
farther  south,  had  persisted  for  nearly  twenty  years,  at  great  sacrifice 
of  human  life  and  of  treasure,  in  the  attempt  to  lay  open  the  secret 
which  she  believed  was  hidden  in  the  region  north  of  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico.  England  and  Portugal  had  both  shown  that  they  were  not 
disposed  to  yield  the  possession  of  the  continent  unquestioned  to  Spain. 
France  alone  of  the  great  maritime  powers  of  Europe,  seemed  indif 
ferent  ;  for  though  no  fishermen  on  the  American  coast  were  more  en 
terprising  and  more  fearless  than  hers,  they  claimed  no  rights  except 
upon  the  sea.  In  1522,  a  single  ship  of  the  Magellan  expedition  re 
turned  to  Portugal,  having  circumnavigated  the  globe  and  solved  the 
problem  that  by  sailing  westward  the  East  could  be  reached.  A  new 
impulse  was  given  to  the  desire  for  a  shorter  northern  pas-  Interest  felt 
sage  to  India,  and  Francis  I.  of  France,  aroused  to  the  great  ^American' 
event  of  his  time,  is  said  to  have  declared :  "  Why,  these  discovery- 
princes  coolly  divide  the  New  World  between  them  !  I  should  like  to 
see  that  article  of  Adam's  will  which  gives  them  America  !  "  In  1528 
he  proposed  to  compete  with  other  powers,  both  for  a  share  in  that 
New  World,  and  to  find  for  France  a  shorter  route  to  Cathay. 

With  this  intent  an  expedition  put  to  sea  from  some  port  in  Brit 
tany,  in  the  autumn  of  1523.     It  consisted  originally  of  four  voyage  of 
vessels,  but  before  much  progress  was  made,  two  of  these  Verrazano- 
were  first   disabled  or    lost,  and   afterward  a   third,  leaving   only  a 
single  ship,  called  the   Dauphine — Dalfina.3     The  commander  was 

1  Charlevoix,  History  of  New  France,  vol.  i.,  p.  106. 

2  Lescarbot,  Histoire  de  Nouvelle  France,  p.  21.     De  Leri's  full  title  was  Le  Sieur,  Baron 
de  Leri  et  de  Saint  Just,  Vicomte  de  Gueu.    This  has  been  erroneously  supposed  to  refer  to 
two  men. 

3  In  the  many  accounts  of  this  voyage,  Dalfina  is  usually  translated   Dolphin,  but  by 
later  writers,  Dauphine.     The    latter,  undoubtedly,  is   correct,  as   to    the  name   of  this 


176 


FRENCH  DISCOVERIES. 


[CHAP.  VIII. 


Giovanni  da  Verrazano,  a  native  of  Florence  —  Italian  by  birth,  as 
Columbus  and  Cabot  were,  —  who,  according  to  the  historians  of 
Dieppe,  was  a  captain  of  one  of  Thomas  Aubert's  ships  ten  years 
before.1  He  saw  and  did,  for  aught  that  can  be  known  now,  no  more 

than  Cabot  and  Cortereal 
had  seen  and  done  about  a 
quarter  of  a  century  before. 
But  he  has  left  behind  him 
in  a  letter  to  the  king,  a 
narrative  of  his  adventures, 
and  for  the  first  time  we  get 
a  dim  and  passing  glimpse 
by  actual  description,  of 
much  of  the  long  stretch  of 
the  Atlantic  coast  of  North 
America  now  within  the 
boundaries  of  the  United 
States.  So  vague,  indeed, 
and  sometimes  so  incorrect 
is  this  narrative,  that  the 
question  has  been  raised 
whether  it  was  not  alto 
gether  destitute  of  truth.2 
But  the  argument  of  its  want  of  accuracy,  based  on  internal  evi 
dence,  may  be  brought  with  equal  force  against  many  of  the  accounts 
of  early  expeditions  which  certainly  were  made.3 

It  has  been  supposed  by  some  writers  that  Verrazano  may  have 
made  a  voyage  in  1523  with  his  four  ships  across  the  Atlantic,  and 
that  the  allusion  in  his  letter  to  a  disaster  which  overtook  two  of  them, 
on  "  Northern  coasts,"  refers  to  such  an  expedition.  But  the  letter 
is  otherwise  taken  up  with  the  single  voyage  of  the  Dauphine,  in 

ship.  Verrazano  alludes  to  it  as  "  the  glorious  and  fortunate  name  of  our  good  ship,"  —  del 
glorioso  name  e  fortunate.  "  Glorious  "  would  be  held  to  be  proper  as  applied  to  the  Dau 
phine,  but  is  not  at  all  fitting  as  descriptive  of  a  dolphin. 

1  Note  by  J.  G.  Shea,  in  Charlevoix,  vol.  i.,  p.  106. 

2  See  An  Inquiry  into  the  Authenticity  of  Documents  concerning  a  Discovery  in  North  Amer 
ica,  claimed  to  have  been  made  b>/  Verrazzano.     Read  before  the  New  York  Historical  Soci 
ety,  October,  1864.     By  Buckingham  Smith. 

3  The  letter  of  Verrazano  to  Francis  I.  was  first  published  by  Ramusio,  within  about 
thirty-two  years  of  its  date,  and- was  copied  from  him  by  Hakluyt.     It  has  been  held  to  be 
authentic  for  three  centuries,  and  is  not  now  to  be  easily  set  aside.     The  discovery,  a  few 
years  since,  of  a  map,  by  Hieronimus  da  Verrazano,  in  a  public  library  in  Rome,  dating 
about  1529,  offsets,  it  is  claimed,  any  possible  constructive  argument  against  his  voyage 
from  negative  evidence.     For  description  of  this  map  and  the  newest  theory  as  to  the 
course  of  Verrazano,  see  an  article  by  James  Carson  Brevoort,  in  Journal  of  American 
Geographical  Society,  of  New  York,  vol.  iv. 


Giovanni  da  Verrazano. 


1524.] 


VOYAGE    OF  VERRAZANO. 


which  he  finally  set  sail  from  the  Madeiras  in  January,  1524.     In 
forty-nine  days  he  "  reached  a  new  country  which,"  he  writes,   Hisarriv 
"  had  never  before  been  seen  by  any  one,"  and  which  by  fires  pntheAmer- 

J          J  '  J  lean  coast, 

along  the  shore,  he  knew  to  be  inhabited.  His,  land-fall,  he  March.  1524. 
says,  was  on  the  thirty-fourth  parallel,  or  about  the  latitude  of  Cape 
Fear,  as  his  course  after  leaving  the  Madeiras  was  "  towards  the  west, 
with  a  little  northwardly."  Thence  he  ran  southward  for  fifty 
leagues,  but  finding  no  harbors  he  reversed  his  course.  Cruising 
leisurely  along  the  coast  for  two  hundred  leagues,  he  first  notes  that 
the  shore  was  covered  with  fine  sand,  rising  into  little  hills  about 
fifty  paces  broad  ;  then  that  arms  of  the  sea  flowed  in  through  inlets, 
making  an  inner  and  an  outer  beach  ;  but  beyond  the  coast-line  he 
saw  a  country  rising  into  beautiful  fields,  and  broad  plains  covered 
with  immense  forests  more  or  less  dense,  various  in  foliage  and  color, 
and  festooned  with  vines.  This  verdant  land  was  fragrant  with  wild 
roses,  violets,  lilies,  and  many  other  flowers,  watered  with  many  lakes 
and  streams.  Beasts  of  the  chase,  and  birds  of  gay  plumage  and 
pleasant  song,  were  plentiful.  The  balmy  air  of  a  delicious  summer 
blew  gently  over  a  smooth  sea,  and  on  the  long  stretch  of  coast,  the 
water  was  deep,  and  there  were  no  rocks  or  hidden  dangers  to  vex  the 
mariner. 

The  natives  thronged  upon  the  sands  to  watch  this  strange  ship,  and 
the  strange  white  men  on  board  of  her.  They  beckoned  them  to 
land,  and  when  a  sailor,  attempting  to  swim  ashore,  was 

Hospitality 

thrown,  halt-drowned  by  the  surf,  upon  the  beach,  they  res-  of  the  na- 

cued  him,  built  fires  to  warm  him  and  to  dry  his  clothing  — 

his  comrades  on  the  ship  looking  on  meanwhile,  dreading  to  see  him 

presently  sacrificed  and 

spitted    for    a    savage 

feast.     But   when    his 

strength  was   restored, 

the    natives    dismissed 

him  with  many  demon 

strations  of  tenderness 

and    respect.      A    few 

days  later  the  French 

men  made   a  cruel  re 

turn  for  this  kindness 

and  hospitality,  by  cap 

turing  and  carrying  off 

an    Indian    boy    they 

met    near    the    shore, 

and  would  have  taken  also  the  comely  mother,  who  had  only  known 


178  FRENCH   DISCOVERIES.  [CHAP.  VIII. 

eighteen  Indian  summers,  but  for  her  outcries  and  vigorous  resistance. 
All  these  people  were  dark  in  color,  well-made,  naked,  except  some 
scanty  covering  of  furs,  or  dressed  deer-skins  and  ornamental  feath 
ers  ;  their  canoes  wera  trunks  of  trees  hollowed  out  by  fire  and  with 
stone  hatchets  ;  and  their  arms  were  bows  and  arrows. 

The  Daupliine  anchored  at  length  where  a  deep  river  flowed  into 
the  sea  from  among  steep  hills  ;  a  boat  put  off  inland  for  a 
entereZthe  short  distance,  and  found  that  this  river  widened  into  a  lake 
some  leagues  in  circuit.  The  ship  had  probably  entered  the 
outer  Bay  of  New  York ;  the  Narrows,  between  the  beautiful  hills 
of  Staten  Island  and  the  bluffs  of  Long  Island  opposite,  was  the  sup 
posed  mouth  of  a  river ;  the  magnificent  sweep  of  the  inner  harbor 
looked,  as  it  does  to-day  to  a  stranger,  like  a  lake ;  the  Indians  plied 
their  canoes  in  large  numbers  from  shore  to  shore,  and  at  night  their 
watch-fires  blazed  in  the  same  unbroken  circle  of  twenty  miles  that 
now  shows  the  continuous  twinkling  line  of  the  gaslights  of  a  million 
of  people.1  But  winds  which  brought  peril  to  the  ship  in  the  outer 
harbor  soon  compelled  them  to  put  to  sea  again,  and  they  left  with 
regret  "  a  region  that  seemed  so  commodious  and  delightful,"  and 
where  they  deluded  themselves  with  the  notion  that  the  hills  showed 
indications  of  great  wealth  in  mineral  deposits. 

Sailing  east  for  fifty  leagues  they  passed  an  island  of  triangular  form, 

which  is  supposed  to  be  Block  Island,  and  a  few  leagues  farther  entered 

a  spacious  haven,  where  they  remained  fifteen   days.     The  entrance, 

.   with  a  rock  in  mid-channel  suitable  for  a  fortification,  was 

Narragansett 

Bay-  a  mile  or  two  wide  and  looking  toward  the  south  ;  but  within 

it  was  a  large  bay  of  many  leagues,  containing  five  small  islands  of 
great  beauty,  and  covered  with  trees.  The  latitude,  says  Verrazano, 
was  41°  40',  which  is  about  that  of  Narragansett  Bay,  and  he  describes 
the  country  "  as  pleasant  as  it  is  possible  to  conceive,"  abounding  in 
fruit  trees  —  of  which  he  could  have  only  seen  the  blossoms,  as  he 
was  there  in  May  —  well  watered,  with  open  plains,  as  well  as  forests 
of  stately  trees,  and  having  many  animals  of  various  kinds.  If  this 
was  the  Vinland  of  the  Northmen,  the  stone  tower  of  Newport  was 
not  there  when  the  Frenchmen  spent  a  fortnight  in  that  harbor,  and 
became  familiar  with  its  shores.  Verrazano  describes  the  houses  of 
the  natives  as  built  of  split  logs,  and  nicely  thatched  with  straw,  and 
he  could  hardly  have  failed  to  see  and  describe  so  remarkable  a  struc 
ture  as  the  tower  if  it  was  in  existence,  and  he  was  ever  in  Newport 
harbor. 

Here  was   their  only  resting-place  for  any  length  of    time.     When 

1  There  are  almost  as  many  theories  as  there  are  writers  on  Verrazano's  voyage,  but 
that  most  generally  received  and  which  seems  the  most  rational,  is  the  explanation  which 
we  have  here  adopted. 


1524.] 


VOYAGE    OF   VERRAZANO. 


the  voyage  was  resumed  it  was  to  cruise  along  the  shores  of  New 
England,  seeing  in  the  distance  as  they  passed  the  White  Mountains 
of  New  Hampshire,  and  sailing  among  the  pleasant  islands  on  the 
coast  of  Maine.  The  Indians  of  this  northern  region  they  found 
fiercer  and  less  trustful  than  those  with  whom  they  had  trafficked  and 
held  friendly  intercourse  farther  south,  for  these  knew  something  of 

white  men  in  the  fish 
ing  vessels  of  Bacca- 
laos,  and  had  profited 
by  the  knowledge. 

Little  else  is  known 
of    Verrazano  than   is 


Verrazano  in  Newport  Harbor. 


given  in  this  narrative  of 

his  voyage  in  the    Dau- 

pJiine.     It  is  conjectured 

that  this  was  not  his  only 

expedition    to   the   New 

World,      and      Hakluyt 

says  :     "he     had    been 

thrice  on  that  coast."1     But  whether  his  voyages  were  one  or  three, 

he  profited  by  his  observations.     His  intention  was  to  find  a  passage 

to  Cathay.    The  opinions  of  the  ancients  that  "  our  ocean  was  one  and 

the  same  as  the  eastern  one  of  Asia,"  the  discovery  of  the  new  land 

had  disproved.     It  was  possible, 'he  thought,  that  this  new  land  might 

be  penetrated,  but  he  was  convinced  after  the  cruise  of  the  Dauphine, 

1  Since  this  chapter  was  put  in  type  a  volume  of  nearly  two  hundred  pages,  by  Henry 
C.  Murphy,  on  the  voyage  of  Verrazano,  has  been  published.  Mr.  Murphy's  aim  is  to  show 
that  the  claims  of  discovery  made  in  Verrazano's  name  have  no  real  foundation.  The  work 
is  learned,  laborious,  and  exhaustive,  and  seems  to  leave  nothing  more  to  be  said  on  that 
side  of  the  question. 


180 


FRENCH  DISCOVERIES. 


[CHAP.  VIII. 


that  it  was  "another  world,"  appearing  "really  to  show  itself  to  be 
larger  than  our  Europe,  Africa,  or  even  Asia."     That  any 

Verrazano  s  J 

idea  of  the      short  route  to  Cathay  could  be   found  was   clearly  impos- 

size  oi  ine  *  * 

continent.  sible.  His  conclusion  was  that  the  globe  was  evidently  larger 
than  the  ancients  supposed  ;  it  was  proved  that  the  sea  was  wider ; 
this  western  land,  as  the  voyages  of  the  Spaniards,  the  Portuguese, 
and  that  of  the  Dauphine  combined  had  shown,  stretched  from  the 
Strait  of  Magellan  to  the  fiftieth  degree  of  northern  latitude,  a  length 

greater  than  that  from  the  northern 
most  point  of  Europe  to  the  most 
southern  of  Africa ;  if  its  breadth 
was  in  accordance  with  its  length, 
then  a  new  continent  larger  than 
Asia  lay  between  Europe  and  In 
dia.  He  may  have  thought,  there 
fore,  that  there  was  little  to  be 
gained  by  a  western  passage  to  In 
dia,  even  if  one  existed  ;  and  that 
it  certainly  could  not  be  a  short  one. 
The  credit  belongs  to  him,  not  only 
of  having  first  explored  with  some 
care  the  Atlantic  coast  of  the  United 
States,  but  of  first  promulgating  the 
true  theory  of  the  size  of  the  globe 
in  contradistinction  to  that  of  the  old  cosmographers,  which  Columbus 
had  adopted  and  believed  in  to  the  day  of  his  death. 

The  subsequent  fate  of  this  navigator  is  unknown.     Some  writers 

maintain  that  he   is  identical  with   a  noted  corsair,  Juan   Florin  or 

Florentin,  who  preyed  upon  the  Spanish  treasure-ships,  but 

Subsequent  i  i          i         n  •        i 

fate  of          was  captured  at   last   by  the  Spaniards   and   hanged.1     J3ut 

Verrazano.  .  ITIII-I  i  • 

Ramusio,  who  first  published  his  letter,  says  that  in  a  sub 
sequent  voyage  Verrazano  having  gone  ashore  with  some  companions, 
was  killed  by  the  natives,  roasted,  and  eaten  in  the  sight  of  those 
who  remained  on  board  the  ship.2  It  is  also  conjectured,  from  an 
Italian  letter  written  in  1537,  that  he  was  then  still  living  in  Rome.3 
Ten  years  elapsed  before  France  sent  out  another  expedition,  when 
Philip  Chabot,  Admiral  of  France,  urged  the  King  to  establish  a 
colony  somewhere  in  the  northwest.  The  enterprise  was  entruste'd 

1  This  story  seems  to  have  been  first  published  by  De  Barcia  (Ensayo  Cronologico,  p.  8) 
in  1723. 

2  Biddle  (Memoir  of  Cabot,  chap,  ix.)  assumes  that  this  ship  must  have  been  the  Mary  of 
Guilford,  which  sailed  from  England  in  1527,  and  that  Verrazano  was  her  pilot. 

3  Letter  of  Annibal  Caro,  cited  from  Tiraboschi's  Italian  Literature,  by  Smith,  Murphy, 
and  others. 


Jacques  Cartier. 


1535]  VOYAGE   OF  JACQUES   CARTIER.  181 

to   Jacques   Cartier,  an   experienced   navigator  of  St.  Malo,  and  he 
sailed  from  that  port  in  April,  1534,  with  two  ships  of  only  Jac  uegCar 
sixty  tons  each,  and  carrying  each  sixty-one  men.   In  twenty  *ier *ai'a  f rom 
days  the  fleet  reached  Bona  Vista  Bay,  on  the  east  coast  of  APril> l^- 
Newfoundland,  whence,  after  some  delay  from  the  ice,  they  steered 
northward  and  passed  through  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle  into  the  Gulf, 
afterwards  named  the  St.  Lawrence.     Cartier  coasted  alone;  the  west- 

O 

ern  shores  of  Newfoundland,  rinding  the  country  so  inhospitable,  so 
filled  with  stones  and  wild  crags,  with  not  a  cart-load  of  good  earth 
anywhere,  that  he  believed  it  to  be  "  the  land  God  allotted  to  Cain." 
The  natives  were  uncouth  and  savage,  "  dressed  in  beasts'  skins,  their 
hair  tied  on  top  like  a  wreath  of  hay,  a  wooden  pin  run  through 
it,"  and  ornamented  with  feathers.  Crossing  the  gulf  he  en-  Hig  degcri 
tered  a  bay,  which  because  of  the  heat  he  named  the  Bay  p^^of6 
of  Chaleur,  where  the  natives,  he  thought,  were  "  the  poor-  Canada- 
est  in  the  world,"  without  clothing,  eating  fish  and  flesh  almost  raw, 
and  with  no  houses  but  their  upturned  canoes.  But  the  country  was 
inviting,  and  he  took  possession  of  it  in  the  name  of  the  King  of 
France,  setting  up  a  cross  thirty  feet  high,  with  three  fleur-de-lys, 
and  the  inscription  Vive  le  Roi  de  France  carved  at  its  top.1  Poor 
and  savage  as  the  natives  were  they  knew  enough  to  object  to  his  pro 
ceeding,  and  their  chief,  protesting  by  signs  that  this  was  his  country, 
said  that  he  wanted  no  crosses  set  up  in  it.  But  Cartier  enticed  him 
and  some  others  on  board  his  ship,  and  conciliating  him  with  some 
trifling  presents,  obtained  his  consent  to  take  his  two  sons  to  France. 
They  sailed  soon  after  on  the  homeward  voyage,  and  arrived  at  St. 
Malo  in  September,  after  an  absence  of  a  little  more  than  four  months. 
The  report  of  these  discoveries  was  so  favorably  received  that 
another  expedition  was  determined  upon,  and  Cartier  was  Second 
dispatched  the  next  spring  —  in  May,  1 535  —  with  three  carSw  °£ 
ships,  the  largest,  however,  only  one  hundred  and  twenty  May-1535' 
tons.  Among  his  followers  were  some  young  men  of  family  and 
fortune,  enthusiastic  for  adventure.  The  embarkation  was  a  solemn 
and  eventful  day  in  St.  Malo ;  the  ships'  companies  making  confession, 
hearing  high  mass  in  the  cathedral,  and  departing  with  the  blessing 
of  the  bishop.  They  were  going,  not  only  to  find  the  way  to  Cathay, 
and  plant  French  colonies  in  new  lands,  but  whole  nations  were  to  be 
brought  within  the  pale  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church. 

1  There  is  an  old  tradition,  says  Charlevoix,  that  the  Spaniards  had  visited  this  country 
before  Cartier,  but  finding  no  mines,  said  of  it  aca-nada  —  nothing  there.  These  words  the 
Indians  remembered  and  repeated,  and  hence  the  name  Canada.  Others  derive  the  name, 
says  Charlevoix,  from  the  Indian  word  Kannata,  meaning  a  collection  of  cabins.  Shea 
adds  in  a  note  that  the  Spanish  derivation  is  fictitious.  —  History  of  New  France,  vol.  ii.,  p. 
113. 


182 


FRENCH   DISCOVERIES. 


[CHAP.  VIII. 


On 


Entering 
the  St. 
Lawrence 


the  10th  of  August  the  fleet  was  at  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Law 
rence,  and  this  name  which  Cartier  first  gave  to  the  strait  be 
tween  the  island  of  Anticosti  —  he  called  it  Assumption 

Island  —  and  the  north  coast 
became  in  time  the  name  of  the 
whole  gulf  and  the  great  river.1 
The  two  Indians,  Taignoagny 
and  Domagaia,  whom  he  had 
taken  home  with  him  the  year 
before,  told  him  that  this  river 
was  the  Hochelaga,  and  that  it 
came  from  so  far  that  no 
man  had  ever  seen  the 
head  of  it.  From  the 
great  width  of  its  mouth, 
and  the  depth  and  volume 
of  its  waters,  he  might 
well  suppose  it  to  be  an 
arm  of  the  sea,  and  that 
he  was  at  length  at 
the  opening  of  the 


Setting  up  the  Arms  of  France. 

strait,  so  long  sought  for,  that  would  lead  him  to  the  Indian  Ocean  ; 
but  his  guides  said  that  it  narrowed  as  it  ascended,  and  that  its  waters 
were  fresh.  He  made  no  haste,  therefore,  to  push  forward,  leisurely 

1  Charlevoix,  History  of  New  France,  vol.  ii.,  p.  115. 


1535.]  EXPLORATION    OF   THE   ST.   LAWRENCE.  183 

exploring  the  coasts,  examining  the  country,  and  looking  for  a  con 
venient  harbor  for  winter  quarters. 

On  the  first  of  September  he  met  the  dark  waters  of  the  Saguenay 
pouring  into  the  St.  Lawrence ;  fifteen  leagues  further  on  he  anchored 
in  the  shadow  of  a  pleasant  island,  which,  because  it  was  covered  with 
hazels,  he  called  Isle  aux  Coudres  ;  eight  leagues  further  he  Expioring 
found  another  island  still  pleasanter  and  larger,  and  so  theriver- 
abounding  in  grapes  that  he  named  it  Bacchus  Island  —  now  known 
as  the  Isle  d' Orleans.  A  fleet  of  canoes  put  out  from  the  beach  to 
look  at  these  strange  visitors,  but  the  natives  were  too  much  alarmed 
to  venture  within  their  reach,  till  Taignoagny  and  Domagaia,  whom 
they  recognized  as  of  their  own  race,  assured  them  that  the  strangers 
were  friends.  Then  they  flocked  aboard  the  vessels,  listened  to  the 
wonderful  story  of  all  that  had  befallen  the  two  youths  on  their  visit 
to  France,  and  of  the  kindness  and  benefits  that  had  been  bestowed 
upon  them.  Donnacona,  the  "  lord  "  of  Saguenay,  had  come  with  the 
rest,  and  he  addressed  to  Cartier  a  long  oration,  took  his  arm,  and, 
kissing  it,  twined  it  about  his  own  neck  in  token  of  amity  and  grati 
tude  that  these  two  young  men,  his  countrymen,  had  received  such 
favors  at  the  hands  of  the  French. 

A  few  leagues  farther  on,  at  the  mouth  of  a  stream  which  Cartier 
named  the  St.  Croix,  —  now  the  St.  Charles  —  was  the  village  of 
Stadacona,  the  home  of  the  chieftain  Donnacona.1  In  the  waters 
which  washed  its  shores,  beneath  the  cliffs  where  now  stands  the  city 
of  Quebec  upon  the  site  of  this  Indian  village,  was  safe 

r  i  i  •  i  •<•  i  e    -*nchorage 

anchorage  for  the  ships,  and  protection  from  the  storms  of  on  the  sit» 
the  coming  winter.  But  Cartier  heard  from  the  natives  of 
another  and  a  larger  town,  the  seat  of  a  rival  and  more  powerful  chief 
than  Donnacona,  from  which  the  river  took  its  name  —  Hochelaga. 
This  he  resolved  to  visit.  The  way  to  it,  Donnacona  said,  was  long 
and  beset  with  perils,  for  he  was  jealous  that  any  of  the  wealth  of 
knives  and  copper  basins,  of  little  looking-glasses  and  brilliant  colored 
beads,  which  the  strangers  brought,  should  fall  into  the  hands  of  the 
rival  chieftain  and  his  people.  To  his  persuasions  he  added  gifts,  pre 
senting  to  Cartier  two  boys,  one  of  whom  was  his  own  brother,  and  a 
little  girl  of  ten  or  twelve  years  of  age  who  was  his  sister's  child. 

The  Frenchman  laughed  at  danger,  and  was  deaf  to  entreaty  ;  and 
then  the  cunning  savage  tried  intimidation.     Three  devils —  cunning  of 
Indian  devils  —  came  out  to  the  ships,  "  wrapped  in  hogges  the  s&™&*- 
skins  white  and  blacke,  their  faces  besmeered  as  blacke  as  any  coales, 

i  Charlevoix  (History  of  New  France),  asserts  that  the  St.  Croix  and  the  St.  Charles 
are  not  the  same.  For  the  evidence  and  authorities  that  they  are  identical,  see  Shea's 
notes  to  Charlevoix,  vol.  ii.,pp.  116,  117,  and  Parkmaii's  Pioneers  of  New  France,  p.  185. 


184 


FRENCH   DISCOVERIES. 


[CHAP.  VIII. 


with  homes  on  their  heads  more  than  a  yard  long."  l  A  crowd  of 
natives  followed  howling  and  shrieking,  and  then  with  a  hideous  up 
roar  retreating  to  the  woods.  Taignoagny  and  Domagaia,  in  real  or 
pretended  fright,  with  clasped,  uplifted  hands,  and  eyes  raised  to 
heaven,  cried  out,  "  Jesu  !  Jesu !  Jesu  Maria !  "  declaring  that  these 
devils  had  come  from  Hochelaga,  sent  by  the  god  of  that  people  to 
say  that  all  should  perish  in  the  ice  and  snow  who  ventured  thither. 
But  the  Christians  could  answer  prophecy  with  prophecy,  and  beat 


Donnacona's  Strategy. 


the  heathen  at  their  own  game.  The  devils 
they  only  mocked  at,  and  as  for  the  Indian 
god,  Cudruaigny,  he  was  declared  to  be  noth 
ing  "  but  a  fool  and  a  noddie."  His  messen 
gers,  they  said,  might  take  him  word  that 
Christ  would  defend  from  the  cold  all  who  be 
lieved  in  him,  and  though  the  French  captain 
had  not  himself  talked  with  Jesus  upon  this  subject,  the  priests  had, 
and  received  from  him  a  promise  of  fair  weather.  There  was  nothing 
Cartier  pro-  more  to  be  said.  The  devils  were  ignominiously  defeated ; 
sTdilw^the  tne  worshippers  of  Cudruaigny  gave  three  great  shrieks  in 
token  of  their  acceptance  of  his  discomfiture,  and  fell  to  sing 
ing  and  dancing  on  the  beach  after  their  usual  mad  fashion.  Cartier, 

1  Narration  of  Carrier's  Voyages,  Hakluyt,  vol.  iii. 


1535.]  CARTIER   AT   HOCHELAGA.  185 

with  the  smallest  of  his  vessels,  a  pinnace,  and  two  boats,  started  the 
next  day  for  Hochelaga. 

For  thirteen  days  they  sailed  leisurely  along  the  pleasant  banks  of 
the  river,  noting  and  admiring  the  fruitfulness  of  the  land,  the  beauty 
of  the  forests,  and  the  many  kinds  of  game,  both  beasts  and  birds, 
they  sheltered;  the  abundance  of  wild  fruit,  especially  of  grapes. 
Everywhere  on  the  way  the  natives  received  them  with  joy  and  won 
der,  and  when,  on  the  second  of  October,  they  landed  about 

Arrival  at 

eleven  miles  from  Hochelaga,  below  the  rapids  of  St.  Mary,1  the  town  of 
a  thousand  Indians,  men,  women,  and  children,  came  down 
to  the  strand  to  welcome  them.  With  great  pomp  and  circumstance, 
Cartier,  "  very  gorgeously  attired,"  marched  with  his  companions  to 
this  royal  residence.  It  was  a  village  of  about  fifty  huts,  surrounded 
with  a  triple  row  of  palisades,  in  the  midst  of  wide  fields  where  the 
brown  dried  leaves  of  the  Indian  corn  waved  and  rustled  in  the  autumn 
winds.  On  this  spot  now  stands  Montreal,  and  a  hill  near  by  which 
Cartier  called  Mont  Royal,  gave  a  name  to  the  future  city. 

In  the  centre  of  Hochelaga  was  a  public  square  where  all  the  people 
gathered.  The  women  and  the  maidens  came  with  their  Cartierbe_ 
arms  full  of  children,  begging  that  they  might  even  so  much  heafthe° 
as  be  touched  by  these  wonderful  white  men  from  some  slck- 
far-off  country.  The  "  lord  and  king,"  Agpuhanna,  a  man  of  fifty 
years,  helpless  from  palsy,  was  brought  in  by  his  attendants  stretched 
upon  a  deer-skin.  Upon  his  head  instead  of  a  crown  he  wore  "  a  cer 
tain  thing  made  of  the  skinnes  of  hedge-hogs  like  a  red  wreath,"  but 
otherwise  his  apparel  did  not  distinguish  him  from  his  subjects.  He 
prayed  that  relief  might  be  given  him  from  the  disease  with  which  he 
was  afflicted.  Cartier  with  his  own  hands  rubbed  the  shrunken  limbs 
of  the  royal  sufferer,  who  bestowed  upon  him  in  return  his  crown  of 
colored  porcupine  quills.  It  seemed  to  these  poor  heathen  "  that  God 
was  descended  and  come  downe  from  heaven  to  heale  them,"  and  the 
halt,  the  lame,  the  blind,  the  impotent  from  age  —  so  old,  some  of 
them,  "  that  the  hair  of  their  eyelids  came  downe  and  covered  their 
cheekes  "  —  were  brought  forward  to  be  healed.  The  best  the  good 
captain  could  do  was  to  pray ;  he  read  the  first  chapter  of  the  Gos 
pel  of  St.  John  and  the  passion  of  Christ,  from  his  service-book,  and 
besought  the  heavenly  Father  that  He  would  have  mercy  upon  these 
benighted  savages,  and  bring  them  to  a  knowledge  of  His  holy  Word. 
The  Indians  were  "  marvellously  attentive,"  looking  to  heaven  as 
the  Christians  did,  and  imitating  all  the  gestures  of  devotion ;  but 
they  better  understood,  and  were  overwhelmed  with  joy  when,  the 
prayers  being  finished,  the  distribution  of  hatchets,  knives,  beads, 
rings,  brooches  of  tin,  and  other  trifles  was  begun. 

1  The  Conquest  of  Canada,  by  the  author  of  Hochelaga,  vol.  ii.,  p.  55 


186 


FRENCH  DISCOVERIES. 


[CHAP.  VIII. 


Cartier  and  his  companions  soon  returned  to  their  winter-quarters 

at  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Charles,  where  those  they  had  left  behind  had 

meanwhile  built  a  rough  fort.     The  river  within  a  few  weeks  was 

covered  with  solid  ice,  and  the  ships  were  buried  in  four  feet  of  snow. 

With  the  increasing  cold,  one  of  those  pestilences  so  common 

Pestilence  r 

among  the     among  the  Indians  broke  out,  and,  whether  it  was  contagious, 

French. 

or  whether  it  was  superinduced  by  exposure  to  the  severity 
of  the  climate,  it  soon  attacked  the  French.    Twenty-four  of  the  com- 


Cartier  at   Hochelaga. 

pany  died,  and  the  rest  were  so  enfeebled  that  only  three  were  capable 
of  any  exertion.  To  the  fear  of  death  from  sickness  was  added  sus 
picion  of  the  Indians,  who,  they  were  afraid,  would  take  advantage  of 
the  weakness  of  the  strangers  and  exterminate  those  whom  the  pesti 
lence  spared.  The  natives  were  ordered  to  keep  away  from  the  fort 
and  the  ships  under  pretence  of  precaution  against  infection ;  and, 
when  any  of  them  approached,  Cartier  ordered  his  sick  men  to  beat 
with  hammers  and  sticks  against  the  side  of  their  berths  that  the  noise 
might  be  mistaken  for  sounds  of  busy  industry. 

But  where  they  looked  for  danger  came  succor.  From  the  Indians 
they  learned  that  a  decoction  of  the  leaves  and  bark  of  a  certain  tree 
was  a  specific  for  that  malady  under  which  they  were  fast  perishing. 
The  squaws  brought  branches  of  the  tree,  and  taught  them  how  to  pre- 


1540.]  EXPEDITION   OF  ROBERVAL.  187 

pare  and  use  this  sovereign  medicine,  which,  in  a  few  days,  not  only  did 
all  that  was  promised  for  it,  but  also  cured  the  sick  of  some  old  chronic 
difficulties.1 

Their  suspicions  of  the  Indians,  nevertheless,  continued.  When 
Donnacona  had  gone  on  a  hunting  expedition  the  French 
had  feared  it  was  to  gather  a  force  sufficient  for  an  attack 
upon  the  fort  and  ships.  A  certain  shyness  the  Indians 
showed  on  their  return,  and  an  unwillingness  to  part,  except  at  a  high 
price,  with  provision  they  needed  for  their  own  support,  confirmed  the 
apprehensions.  Suspicion  on  the  one  side  undoubtedly  begot  it  on 
the  other  ;  but  that  the  natives  had  the  most  ground  for  it  was  shown 
in  the  end.  When  Cartier,  in  the  spring,  was  ready  to  sail,  he  enticed 
Donnacona,  with  nine  others,  on  board  his  ships,  seized  and  confined 
them,  and,  heedless  of  the  cries  and  entreaties  of  their  countrymen,  car 
ried  them  to  France.  In  July,  1536,  the  fleet  arrived  at  St.  Malo;  and, 
when  four  years  later,  another  expedition  returned  to  Canada,  Donna 
cona  and  his  companions,  excepting  one  little  girl,  were  all  dead.  They 
had  been  baptized  and  received  into  the  bosom  of  the  Church,  however, 
before  they  died  —  compensation  enough,  it  was  thought,  for  enforced 
loss  of  liberty,  country,  and  friends. 

Cartier  made  to  King  Francis  a  report  of  the  fruitfulness  of  Canada, 
its  wealth  in  copper,  gold,  and  precious  stones,  which  he  had  heard  of, 
but  not  seen ;  of  the  wonders  of  the  land,  the  deer  with  only  two  feet, 
the  men  with  only  one,  others  who  never  eat,  and  others  still,  mere 
pigmies  in  stature ;  but  the  interest  excited  was  not  enough  to  lead  to 
any  renewal  of  the  attempt  at  colonization  till  1540.  In  that  year 
Jean  Francois  de  la  Roque,  Seigneur  de  Roberval  of  Picardy,  asked  a 
commission  for  farther  exploration  and  experiment,  and  let-  Commission 
ters  patent  were  issued,  in  which  the  titles  were  conferred  R0^afe 
upon  him  of  Lord  of  Norimbegua,  Viceroy  and  Lieutenant-  154°- 
general  in  Canada,  Hochelaga,  Saguenay,  Newfoundland,  Belle  Isle, 
Carpont,  Labrador,  Great  Bay,  and  Baccalaos.  A  Spanish  spy  alarmed 
his  government  with  a  report  that  colonization  was  now  to  be  under 
taken  by  the  French  on  a  grand  scale ;  that  thirteen  ships  were  to 

1  The  tree  was  called  Ameda,  or  Hanneda,  by  the  Indians,  and  was  thought,  says  the  old 
chronicle,  to  be  the  Sassafras.  But  the  same  narrative  (Hakluyt,  vol.  iii.)  says,  that  the 
leaves  were  taken  at  the  time  from  the  tree,  which,  of  course,  could  not  have  been  possible 
of  the  sassafras  in  winter.  "  A  tree  as  big  as  any  Oake  in  France,"  it  relates,  "  was  spoiled 
and  lopped  bare,  and  occupied  all  in  five  or  sixe  daies,  and  it  wrought  so  well  that  if  all  the 
phisicians  of  Mountpelier  and  Louaine  had  bene  there  with  all  the  drugs  of  Alexandria,  they 
wovdd  not  have  done  so  much  in  one  yere  as  that  tree  did  in  sixe  dayes ;  for  it  did  so  pre- 
vaile,  that  as  many  as  used  of  it,  by  the  grace  of  God,  recovered  their  health."  In  the  ac 
count  of  the  next  voyage  of  Cartier  the  Hanneda  is  spoken  of  as  a  tree  "  which  hath  the 
most  excellent  virtue  of  all  the  trees  in  the  world,"  and  as  measuring  "  about  three  fath 
oms  about."  It  was  probably  the  spruce. 


188 


FRENCH   DISCOVERIES. 


[CHAP.  VIIL 


take  out  twenty-five  hundred  men,  and  two  years'  provisions.  "  Let 
them  go,"  said  the  Portuguese,  "they  can  do  no  harm  in  Baccalaos."1 
But  in  May,  1541,  C artier,  who  was  the  pilot  general,  got  away  with 
five  vessels  only,  leaving  Roberval  to  follow,  after  further  prepara 
tions,  the  next  year. 


Cartier's    Departure    from    St.    Malo. 

The  expedition,  like  those  preceding  it,  was  barren  of  any  perma 
nent  results.  A  new  fort  was  begun  a  few  miles  above  the  site  of  the 
old  one,  at  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Croix  River ;  some  little  land  was 
sowed  ;  something  which  they  took  to  be  gold  was  gathered  ;  something 
else,  probably  crystals  of  quartz,  they  supposed  were  diamonds  —  for 
they  were  so  "  faire,  polished,  and  excellently  cut,"  that  in  the  sunlight 
they  "  glister  as  it  were  sparkles  of  fire."  Two  ships  were  sent  home 
in  the  autumn  with  tidings  of  good  progress.  It  was  determined, 
nevertheless,  to  abandon  the  adventure.  The  Indians  soon  became 
troublesome,  for  probably  they  were  not  in  the  least  imposed  upon  by 
the  story  of  Jacques  Cartier,  that  their  kidnapped  countrymen  —  ex 
cept  Donnacona,  who,  it  was  acknowledged,  was  dead — were  all  mar 
ried  in  France,  and  living  there  as  "  lords."  And  the  next  summer 
Roberval,  on  his  way  out  with  an  addition  to  the  colony,  of  two 
hundred  men  and  women,  met  Cartier  in  the  harbor  of  St.  John, 
Newfoundland,  with  his  three  remaining  vessels  bound  homeward. 
Roberval  indignantly  ordered  him  to  return  to  the  St.  Law 
rence.  In  the  morning  his  lieutenant  was  far  out  to  sea  on 
his  way  to  France,  having  quietly  slipped  off  in  the  darkness 
of  the  night.  Perhaps  it  was  not  fear  of  the  Indians,  nor  the  hope- 
1  See  Buckingham  Smith's  Collection  de  raros  Documentos,  p.  107,  et  seq. 


Cartier 
deserts 
Roberval 


1555.] 


THE   HUGUENOTS  IN  AMERICA. 


189 


In  1555  a  colony  went  out  to  °01°°y4in 

"  boutD  Amer- 

They  ica- 


lessness  of  a  longer  struggle  with  the  difficulties  and  hardships  of 
settling  a  new  country,  that  alone  influenced  C artier  and  his  com 
panions.  For,  says  the  old  narrative,  they  were  "  moved,  as  it  seem- 
eth,  with  ambition,  because  they  would  have  all  the  glory  of  the  dis 
covery  of  those  parts  themselves." 

Roberval  continued  his  voyage,  weakened  but  not  dismayed  by  the 
desertion  of  his  lieutenant.     Of  the  colony  he  planted  little 
is  known  except  its  failure,  after  at  least  one  winter's  ex-  Roberva° 
perience  of  the  hardships  of  the  wilderness.     According  to  of  attempt8 
one  account,  Cartier  was  sent  to  bring  the  survivors  home.1 
At  any  rate  they  returned.    Roberval,  it  is  said,  undertook  another  ex 
pedition  with  a  brother  in  1549,  which  was  lost  at  sea ;  but  it  is  also 
asserted  that  this  could  not  be,  as  he  was  killed  in  Paris.    Cartier  died 
about  1555.     It  was  not  till  the  end  of  the  century  that  other  French 
men  followed  these  first  adventurers  for  the  settlement  of  the  northern 
portion  of  that  immense   country  in   North  America   which  France 
claimed  as  her  own. 

The  foothold  she  next  strove  for  was  much  farther  south,  where  it 
was  hoped  a  handful  of   Huguenots  might  find  an  asylum  T 

J  Huguenot 

from  religious  persecution. 

the  Rio  de  Janeiro,  but  it  soon  came  to  a  dismal  end. 
were  Protestants,  seeking  to  escape  in  the  wilderness  the  scaffold  and 
the  fagot  to  which 
their  religious  belief  at 
home  exposed  them ; 
but  bitter  dissensions 
soon  arose  among  them 
upon  such  questions  as 
whether  water  could 
be  rightfully  mixed 
with  the  wine  of  the 
Lord's  Supper,  or  its 
bread  be  properly 
made  of  Indian  meal. 
Villegagnon,  the  lead 
er,  repenting  of  his 
Protestant  heresies,  if 
he  ever  seriously  en 
tertained  them,  returned  to  the  bosom  of  the  indulgent  mother  church, 
and  abandoned  his  command.  A  little  remnant  of  the  colony  was 
attacked  by  the  Portuguese,  and  if  any  escaped  alive  it  was  only  by 
throwing  themselves  upon  the  more  tender  mercy  of  the  savages. 

1  Lescarbot,  Histoire  de  Colonie  Franqaise  en  Canada. 


French    Costumes  (16th   Century). 


190  FRENCH  DISCOVERIES.  [CHAP.  VIII. 

Meanwhile  the  Reformation  took  deeper  root  in  France,  —  a  struggle 
for  political  power  as  well  as  for  the  rights  of  conscience.  There  were 
many  anxious  to  escape  from  present  wrong  and  suffering,  and  from 
the  uncertainties  of  the  future,  strong  as  the  Protestant  party  had 
Admiral  Co-  grown  both  among  the  people  and  at  Court.  Coligny,  the  lord 
colon yBun-a  admiral,  and  leader  of  the  Huguenots,  with  a  view  to  the 
^bauu?  gl°ry  °f  France,  and  to  the  protection  also  of  his  oppressed 

countrymen,  proposed  to  renew  the  attempt  at  colonization 
in  the  New  World.  In  February,  1562,  he  sent  from  Havre,  in  the 
name  of  the  king,  two  ships  under  the  command  of  Captain  John 
Ribault,  "  to  discover,  and  view  a  certaine  long  coast  of  the  West  In 
dia  ....  called  La  Florida,"  —  a  coast  so  long,  indeed,  that  it  included 
the  whole  of  the  Atlantic  side  of  the  United  States  from  the  Rio 
Grande  to  the  Canadian  line.  Ribault  had  under  his  command,  beside 
the  seamen,  a  band  of  soldiers,  and  with  him  went  a  number  of  gen 
tlemen  who  were  rather  his  companions  than  his  subordinates.  He 
was  a  man  of  experience,  of  character,  of  tried  courage,  of  good  sense 
and  confirmed  faith ;  and  "  a  man  in  truth,"  says  the  old  chronicle, 
"expert  in  sea  causes."1  His  followers,  it  was  hoped,  were  worthy 
of  such  a  leader.  They  meant  to  build  up  the  Reformed  Protestant 
Church  in  the  wilderness  to  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  salvation  of  a 
"  brutishe  people ; "  but  they  also  looked  "  to  trafficke  in  riche  and 
inestimable  commodities,"  in  gold,  and  silver,  and  precious  stones. 
They  were  determined  to  be  rich,  and  they  proposed  also  to  be  good. 
The  voyage  was  tempestuous  and  long,  for  winds  from  the  west 

and  southwest  drove  them  back,  compelling  them  to  put  into 

They  reach 

the  coast  of  Brest  to  land  their  sick,  and  "  suffer  the  tempest  to  passe." 
Taking  thence  a  new  departure  on  the  27th  of  February,  they 
held  a  direct  course  across  the  Atlantic  till  the  30th  of  April,  when  they 
approached  "a  fayre  coast,  stretchying  of  a  great  length,  covered  with 
an  infinite  number  of  high  and  fayre  trees,  without  anye  shewe  of  hills." 
It  was  the  coast  of  Florida,  in  about  the  latitude  of  twenty-nine  and 
a  half.  Casting  anchor  some  leagues  from  the  land,  off  a  cape  which 
they  named  Cape  Francois,  and  which  is  supposed  to  be  a  headland  of 
Matanzas  Inlet,  the  boats  were  sent  to  seek  for  a  harbor.  On  their  re 
turn  in  the  afternoon,  with  a  favorable  report,  they  weighed  anchor  and 
sailed  along  the  coast  northward,  observing  it  "  with  unspeakable 
pleasure,  of  the  odorous  smell  and  beautie  of  the  same,"  till  they  came 
to  "  a  goodly  and  great  river."  Entering  this  the  next  morning  they 
found  it  "to  increase  still  in  depth  and  largenesse,  boy  ling  and  roar 
ing  through  the  multitude  of  all  kind  of  fish."  It  was  a  safe  and  pleas 
ant  harbor.  The  Indians  running  along  the  sands  welcomed  them 
1  Laudonniere's  Notable  Historie,  in  Hakluyt,  vol.  iii. 


1562.] 


RIBAULT    AT   THE    ST.   JOHN  RIVER. 


191 


with  wondering  but  friendly  gestures,  showing  "  all  gentlenesse  and 
amitie,"  and  pointing  out  the  easiest  landing-place  ;  trinkets,  "  some 
looking-glasse,  and  other  prettie  things  of  small  value,"  were  exchanged 
for  skins  and  girdles  of  leather  "  as  well  courerd  and  coloured  as  was 
possible  ; "  the  chief,  or  king,  made  an  oration,  eloquent  but  unintelli 
gible  ;  and  the  French  fell  upon  their  knees  upon  the  beach,  "  to  give 
thanks  to  God  for  that  of  His  grace  He  had  conducted  them  to  these 
strange  places,  and  to  beseech  Him  to  bring  to  the  knowledge  of  our 
Saviour,  Christ,  this  poore  people."  The  river  they  called,  from  the 
day  on  which  they  entered  it,  the  River  of  May.  It  is  now  known  as 
the  St.  John. 


Entering   the    St.   John    River. 

There  were  no  bounds  to  the  delight  and  enthusiasm  with  which 
the  impressible  Frenchmen  entered  upon  their  new  possession ;  and  in 
token  of  its  being  theirs  they  set  up,  on  the  second  day,  a  Setting  up  a 
stone  column,  on  which  were  engraved  the  arms  of  France,  ^""rmifof 
on  the  south  bank  of  the  river,  "  upon  a  little  hill  compassed  France- 
with  Cypres,  Bayes,  Paulines,  and  other  trees,  with  sweete  smelling 
and  pleasant  shrubbes."  This  was  the  first  boundary  on  the  south  of 
his  Majesty's  dominion  in  the  New  World.  It  was  erected  in  the  early 
morning,  before  the  Indians  were  assembled,  perhaps  because  these 
Frenchmen  were  conscious  that  they  had  no  more  rightful  title  to  the 
land  than  the  red  men  had  to  the  streets  of  Paris.  But  there  was  no 


192  FRENCH   DISCOVERIES.  [CHAP.  VIII. 

cause  for  anxiety ;  the  natives  looked  at  the  pillar  with  mute  surprise, 
evidently  regarding  it  as  only  one  puzzle  the  more  about  these  strange 
visitors.  They  had  yet  to  learn  that  as  heathens  they  were  the  rightful 
spoil  of  all  good  Christians.  The  strangers  chose  to  take  this  country 
as  their  own,  for  to  them  it  seemed  "  the  fairest,  fruitfulest, 
of  the  new  and  pleasantest  of  all  the  world."  Its  trees  were  "  of  wonder 
ful  greatnesse  and  height,"  and  of  every  variety  for  beauty 
and  value  ;  to  the  tops  the  wild  vines  grew  "'  with  grapes  according  ;  " 
the  caterpillars  on  the  mulberries  they  supposed  were  silkworms  ;  in 
these  pleasant  woods  roamed  deer,  wild  swine,  bears,  lynxes,  leopards, 
conies,  and  many  other  beasts  unknown,  all  valuable  for  food  or  for 
their  skins  and  furs  ;  among  the  many  birds  were  turkeys,  partridges  of 
two  kinds,  and  woodcocks  ;  eyrets,  herons,  bitterns,  curlews  screamed, 
or  swam,  or  waded  about  the  waters  of  the  bay  ;  in  the  river  was 
"  marvellous  store  "  of  trout,  millet,  plaice,  turbot,  and  other  fishes ; 
so  that  they  concluded,  "  it  is  a  thing  unspeakable  to  consider  the 
thinges  that  bee  scene  there,  and  shall  bee  found  e  more  and  more  in 
this  incomparable  lande,  which  never  yet  broken  with  plough  yrons 
bringeth  forth  al  things  according  to  his  first  nature,  wherewith  the 
eternall  God  indued  it." 

Not  less   attractive  were  the  mild-mannered  and  courteous  though 
naked  savages.     The  men  were  -well-shaped,  of  goodly  stature,  digni 
fied,  self-possessed,  and  of  pleasant  countenance  :  the  women 

Manners  of 

the  natives.  wen  favored,  modest,  suffering  no  one  "dishonestly  to  ap- 
proch  too  neare  them  ;  "  and  both  were  so  beautifully  painted  that 
"  the  best  Painter  of  Europe  could  not  amende  it."  But  better  and 
more  promising  than  all,  some  of  these  Indians  wore  ornaments  of 
gold,  silver,  copper,  pearls,  and  turquoises ;  from  a  collar  of  gold  and 
silver  about  the  neck  of  one  of  them,  hung  a  pearl  as  big  as  an  acorn, 
which  the  owner  was  willing  enough  to  part  with  for  a  looking-glass 
or  a  knife.  Peai'ls  were  found  there  as  fair  as  in  any  country  of  the 
world,  taken  from  oysters  along  the  river  side,  among  the  reeds  and  in 
the  marshes,  in  "•  so  merveylous  aboundance  as  is  skant  probable." 
Even  Cibola  could  be  reached  in  boats  by  way  of  rivers  in  twenty 
days  —  Cibola,  two  thousand  miles  off  on  the  Pacific,  which  the  Span 
ish  friar,  Marco  de  Niqa,  visited  in  the  year  1539,  and  reported  that 
within  it  were  seven  great  cities,  the  houses  whereof  were  built  of 
lime  and  stone,  two,  three,  sometimes  five  stories  in  height,  ascended 
on  the  outside  by  ladders ;  whose  inhabitants  clothed  themselves  in 
gowns  of  cotton,  in  woollen  cloth,  and  in  garments  of  leather,  wearing 
girdles  of  turquoises  around  their  waists,  emeralds  in  their  ears  and 
noses;  whose  common  household  vessels  were  of  gold  and  silver; 
and  where  gold  was  more  abundant  than  in  Peru,  the  walls  of  the 


1562.]  COLONY   AT   PORT   ROYAL.  193 

temples  being  covered  with  plates  of  that  precious  metal.  This  was 
the  captivating  perspective  seen  by  the  new  comers  through  the 
everglades,  and  festooned,  perfumed  forests  of  Florida  in  May  —  the 
seductive  vision  of  a  life  of  opulence  and  ease  which  -awaited  them  in 
place  of  the  civil  strife  and  religious  persecution  which  they  had  left  at 
home. 

From  the  St.  John — River  of  May — they  sailed  northward  along 
the    coast,    naming    the    streams    for   well-known   rivers   of    France. 
Everywhere  the  natives  gave  them  the  same  kind  welcome ; 
everywhere  they  found  the  country  beautiful  and   promis-  theeyeoastup 
ing  —  "full  of   havens,  rivers,  and  islands,"    says    Captain 
Ribault,  "of  such  fruitfulnes  as  cannot  with  tongue  be  expressed;  in 
fertilitie  apt  and  commodious  throughout  to  beare  and    bring  forth 
plentifully  all  that  men  would  plant  or  sowe  upon  it.''     On  the  27th 
they  entered  the  harbor  of  Port  Royal.     Here  a  navy  might 

.  ,       .  .  .  .  i  PI         Entrance  to 

ride  in  satety  —  as  navies  have  since  done  —  "  one  or   the   Port  Royal 

e  -i  i  i  IT??-  i   •    i      harbor. 

tayrest  and  greatest  havens  in  the  worlde,  into  which 
flowed  "  many  rivers  of  meane  bignesse  and  large,"  watering  "  one  of 
the  goodliest,  best,  and  frutefullest  countreys  that  ever  was  seene,  and 
where  nothing  lacketh,  and  also  where  as  good  and  likely  commodities 
bee  founde  as  in  other  places  thereby."  Here  it  was  proposed  to 
plant  a  colony.  t 

Ribault  called  his  company  together  and  made  them  an  address, 
which  he  modestly  omits  in  his  own  relation,1  but  which  is  faith 
fully  reported  in  another.2  He  reminded  them  of  the  great  im 
portance  of  the  enterprise  in  which  they  were  engaged,  and  of  the 
"  eternal  memorie  "  which  should  of  right  belong  to  those,  who,  for 
getting  their  parents  and  their  country,  should  have  the 
"  ffoode  happe  to  make  tryall  of  the  benefits  and  commodities  Ribault  to 

e       .  r  •{  .  .  his  men. 

of  this  new  land."  Their  humble  birth  and  condition,  he 
told  them,  should  be  no  discouragement,  for  many,  it  should  be  re 
membered,  among  the  Romans,  "  for  their  so  valiant  enterprises,  not 
for  the  greatnesse  of  their  parentage,  haue  obtained  the  honour  to 
tryumph  ;  "  and  not  among  the  Romans  only  were  there  many  notable 
examples  of  men  of  low  origin  rising  to  places  of  dignity  and  power. 
And  his  promise  to  those  who  should  permit  themselves  to  be  "  regis- 
tred  forever  as  the  first  that  inhabited  this  strang  countrey,"  was  "  I 
will  so  imprint  your  names  in  the  king's  eares,  and  the  other  princes, 

1  The,  True  and  Last  Discouerie  of  Florida,  made  by  Captain  John  Ribault  in  the  yeere  1562. 
Dedicated  to  a  great  noble  man  of  France,  and  translated  into  Englishe  by  one  Thomas  Hackit- 
Hakluyt's  Divers  Voyages. 

2  A   Notable  Historic  containing  Fonre   Voyages  made  by    Certaine  French   Captames  into 
Florida,  etc.,  etc.,  by  Monsieur  Laudonniere.     Hakluyt's  Voyages,  vol.  iii. 


194  FRENCH   DISCOVERIES.  [CHAP.  VIII. 

that  your  renowne  shall  hereafter  shine  vnquenchable  through  our 
Realme  of  France." 

Whether  moved  by  his  eloquence,  or  carried  away  by  the  en 
thusiasm  which  the  events  and  scenes  of  the  last  few  days  inspired, 
there  were  so  many  anxious  to  be  left  behind,  that  Ribault  "  had 
much  to  do  to  stay  their  importunitie."  Thirty,  however,  were  all  he 
Beginning  could  spare,  and  a  soldier  of  long  experience,  Albert  de  la 
French  set-  Pierria,  who  was  the  first  among  them  all  to  offer  to  remain, 
tiement.  was  appointed  captain.  With  a  good  will  all  hands  then 
went  to  work  to  put  up  a  fort  for  the  protection  of  the  colonists.  It 
was  called  Charles  Fort,  and  was  built  on  a  little  island  in  a  stream 
they  called  Chenonceau,  now  known  as  Archer's  Creek,  about  six 
miles  from  Beaufort,  South  Carolina.1  This  done,  Ribault  set  sail 
with  his  two  vessels  on  the  llth  of  June,  to  return  to  France,  leaving 
with  the  colonists  a  store  of  victuals  and  ammunition,  and  this  part 
ing  exhortation:  that  they  be  obedient  to  their  captain,  and  live  as 
brethren,  one  with  another. 

The  first  care  of  the  colonists  was  to  finish  the  fort,  never  resting 
night  or  day  till  this  was  done,  that  there  might  the  sooner  be  leisure 
for  exploration  into  the  interior.  But  here  all  real  work  began  and 
ended.  A  place  to  fight  in,  if  need  be,  first;  then  to  spy  out  and 
gather  the  riches  of  the  land^  in  gold  and  silver  and  precious  stones, 
was  their  notion  of  colonization.  No  provision  was  made  for  the 
future ;  they  relied  on  Ribault's  promise  to  send  them  speedy  succor, 
as  if  it  were  a  narrow  stream  and  not  three  thousand  miles  of  ocean 
that  separated  them  from  France.  The  "  fat  ground,"  so  "  won- 
derfull  fertill  that  it  will  bring  forthe  the  wheate  and  all  other  corne 
twice  a  yeere,"  they  suffered  to  remain  as  they  found  it,  "  unbroken 
with  plough -irons,"  and  ere  long  they  were  suffering  for  want  of 
food.  The  game  with  which  in  their  season  the  woods  were 
ana  idleness  filled,  the  fish  with  which  the  waters  were  alive,  they  were 
'  too  unskillful  or  too  idle  to  take.  Indolent  and  improvident, 
they  soon  became  dependent  upon  the  bounty  of  the  savages.  They 
cultivated  the  friendship  of  all  the  tribes  within  their  reach,  and 
though  the  Indians  soon  learned  to  look  upon  them  with  contempt  for 
their  idleness  and  imbecility,  they  seem  to  have  felt  for  them  none 
of  that  hatred  and  fear  which  the  Spaniards  always  aroused  by  their 
licentiousness  and  cruelty. 

No  aid  came  from  France.  The  Indians,  who  lived  as  their  race 
lives  always,  from  hand  to  mouth,  and  in  their  natural  state  were  ac 
customed  to  look  starvation  in  the  face  at  least  once  a  year  between 
seed-time  and  harvest,  had  little  to  spare.  Of  this,  however,  they 

1  Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New  World,  by  Francis   Parkmau. 


1562.] 


THE    COLONY   ABANDONED. 


195 


gave  generously,  and  when  at  one  time  the  store-house  at  Charles 
Fort,  filled  by  the  charity  of  a  distant  chief,  was,  the  next  night,  de 
stroyed  with  all  it  contained,  by  fire,  their  savage  benefactors  built, 
within  twelve  days,  a  new  house,  and  refilled  it.  With  hunger  and 
destitution  the  colonists  grew  discontented,  desperate,  and  insubordi 
nate.  Captain  Albert,  either  from  an  ill-judged  attempt  to  enforce 
rigid  discipline  among  these  starving  wretches,  or  else  in  the  mere 
wantonness  of  power,  hanged  a  drummer,  named  Guernache,  for 
some  trifling  fault,  and  banished  a  soldier,  La  Chere,  to  a  desolate 
island,  where  he  was  afterward  found  half  dead  from  him-  Mutiny  and 
ger.  Thereupon  followed  defiance  and  mutiny  from  others  bloodshed- 
who  were  threatened  with  the  like  punishments,  and  these  only  ended 
in  the  murder  of  the  captain.  Then  Nicolas  Barre  was  chosen  gov 
ernor,  "  a  man  worthy  of  commendation,  and  one  which  knewe  so 
well  to  quit  himselfe  of  his  charge  that  all  rancour  and  dissention 
ceased  among  them."  There  was  at  last  peace. 

But  they  were  as  hungry  as  before,  and  the  question  now  was,  how 
to  get  back  to  France.  So  desperate  was  their  condition  that,  although 
there  were  no  mechanics  among  them,  they  determined  to  build  a 


Building  the   Pinnace. 

small  pinnace.  For  cordage  they  took  such  rope  as  the  Indians  could 
make  for  them ;  for  sails,  what  they  had  left  of  their  own  sheets  and 
shirts ;  for  provisions,  as  much  corn  as  the  natives  chose  to  give ;  and  so, 
"  drunken  with  excessive  joy  "  at  the  hope  of  seeing  France  Buiiding  of 
again,  but  as  always,  without  "  foresight  and  consideration,"  embarkation 
and  with  '"slender  victual,"  they  put  to  sea.  No  madder  forFrance- 
voyage,  perhaps,  was  ever  undertaken.  Only  one  third  of  it  was 


196  FRENCH   DISCOVERIES.  [CHAP.  VIII. 

made  when  the  wind  failed  them.  For  the  next  three  weeks  they 
sailed  only  twenty-five  leagues,  and  then  provision  became  so  short 
that  twelve  kernels  of  corn  a  day  was  each  man's  allowance.  Even 
this  was  soon  exhausted,  and  there  was  nothing  left  to  eat  but  their 
shoes  and  leather  jackets.  A  part  died  of  hunger.  Water  there  was 
none,  except  the  salt  sea  that  poured  in  at  every  seam  of  their  crazy 
craft.  A  storm  overtook  them,  and  for  three  days  they  lay  helpless  and 
Misery  on  *n  despair  in  the  bottom  of  the  boat,  which  drifted  whither- 
shipboard.  soever  it  would.  Hope  revived  at  the  proposition  that  one 
should  die  to  save  the  rest,  and  the  lot  fell  upon  that  La  Chore  whom 
Captain  Albert  had  banished  from  the  colony  to  starve  alone  upon 
an  island  at  Port  Royal.  "  Now  his  flesh  was  divided  equally  among 
his  fellowes:  a  thing  so  pitiful  to  recite,"  says  Laudonnidre,  "that  my 
pen  is  loth  to  write  it."  But  it  saved  the  rest ;  they  soon  after  fell  in 
with  an  English  vessel,  on  board  of  which  was  one  of  their  com 
panions  who  had  gone  home  with  Ribault,  and  they  were  taken, 
the  most  feeble  to  France,  the  others  as  prisoners  to  England. 

It  was  by  no  neglect  of  Ribault's  that  the  thirty  men  left  at  Charles 
Fort  had  watched  in  vain  for  his  promised  return  till  they  were  ready 
Affairs  in  to  resort  to  any  desperate  measure.  Civil  war  had  broken 
France.  Qu^  when  he  reached  France  ;  and  Coligny,  the  lord  admiral, 
had  no  leisure  to  think,  even  in  the  interest  of  the  reformed  religion, 
of  a  feeble  colony  planted  in  the  wilderness  on  the  other  side  of  the 
sea.  So  long  as  the  country  at  home  was  distracted  by  the  war,  and 
so  long  as  any  doubt  remained  of  his  own  party  attaining  to  supreme 
power  in  the  state,  it  was  vain  to  ask  for  aid.  A  few  months  after 
Ribault's  return,  the  Duke  of  Guise,  the  head  of  the  Catholic  faction, 
was  assassinated,  and  in  the  confusion  that  followed,  Coligny  had 
enough  to  do  to  defend  himself  against  the  charge  of  being  the  insti 
gator  of  that  act.  True,  it  ultimately  led  to  a  short  peace,  but  it  was 
long  before  there  was  even  the  semblance  of  a  reconciliation  between 
parties  hating  each  other  with  both  religious  and  political  rancor  ; 
long  before  there  was  any  real  relief  to  a  country  whose  business  and 
agriculture  were  wellnigh  ruined,  whose  discharged  soldiers  lived  by 
robbery,  whose  people  were  generally  suffering  for  want  of  food,  and 
from  whose  borders  a  foreign  foe  had  still  to  be  expelled. 

But  in  1564,  Coligny  represented  to  the  king  that  no  news  had 
been  heard  from  the  men  sent  to  Florida,  and  that  it  was  a  pity  they 
Coligny -a  should  be  left  to  perish.  A  new  expedition  was  determined 
tureimdeT  O115  but  it  is  not  certain  that  the  survivors  taken  from  the 
donnifireLau~  pinnace  did  not  arrive  in  France  before  it  sailed.  If  so,  the 
attempt  at  colonization,  at  any  rate,  was  to  be  persevered 
in,  and  three  ships  sailed  in  April  under  the  command  of  Captain 
Ren(i  de  Laudonniere,  who  was  with  Ribault  on  the  first  voyage. 


1564.]  COLIGNY'S   SECOND   COLONY.  197 

In  June  the  fleet  of  three  ships  arrived  in  the  River  of  May.  On 
landing,  the  Frenchmen  were  greeted  with  shouts  of  welcome  by  a 
crowd  of  Indians,  men  and  women,  who  cried  out,  "  Ami !  Ami !  " 
(Friend  !  Friend !)  the  one  French  word  they  had  learned  from  their 
former  visitors,  and  remembered.  Their  Paracoussy,  or  chief,  whose 
name  was  Satouriona,  led  the  Frenchmen  to  the  pillar  of 

-.._..---  ir  Ribault's 

stone  which  Kibault  had  set  up  two  years  betore,  "and  wee  piiiar  adored 
found  the  same,"  says  Laudonnie're,  "  crowned  with  crownes 
of  Bay  and  at  the  foote  thereof  many  little  baskets  full  of  mill 
(corn),  which  they  call  in  their  language,  Tapaga  Tapola.  Then, 
when  they  came  thither,  they  kissed  the  same  with  great  reuerence, 
and  besought  vs  to  do  the  like,  which  we  would  not  denie  them,  to 
the  ende  we  might  drawe  them  to  be  more  in  friendship  with  vs." 
The  next  day  the  chief  received  the  captain  and  his  suite  in  state, 
"  vnder  the  shadow  of  an  arbour,  apparalled  with  a  great  Harts  skinne 
dressed  like  chamois,  and  painted  with  deuices  of  strange  and  diuers 
colours,  but  of  so  liuely  a  portrature,  and  representing  antiquity,  with 
rules  so  iustly  compassed,  that  there  is  no  Painter  so  exquisite  that 
could  finde  fault  therewith." 

Among  the  first  gifts  from  the  Indians  was  a  wedge  of  silver,  given 
to  Laudonni^re  by  a  son  of  Satouriona.  When  inquiry  was 

j  ,u-         -1  £          \i  Gift  of  silver 

afterward  made  as  to  where  this  silver  came  from,  the  cun-  from  the  na 

tives 

ning  Indian,  who  understood  the  eagerness  of  the  French 
men  to  find  mines  of  the  precious  metals,  and  meant  to  turn  that 
passion  to  his  own  account,  asserted  that  the  wedge  was  taken  from  a 
tribe,  some  days'  journey  in  the  interior,  called  the  Thimogoa;  that 
they  were  his  natural  and  deadly  enemies,  and  if  the  strangers  Wc/uld 
join  him  in  fighting  them,  enough  of  gold  and  silver  could  be  got  to 
satisfy  all  their  desires. 

But  the  enthusiasm  and  delight  of  Laudonniere  and  his  companions 
were  —  as  the  case  had  been  with  Ribault  and  his  company,  and  as 
was  entirely  characteristic  of  them  all  as  Frenchmen  —  extravagant 
and  beyond  all  reason.  The  soil  of  this  incomparable  country  was 
so  rich ;  the  trees  festooned  with  vines  and  hanging  moss,  and  "  of  so 
souereign  odour  that  Baulme  smelleth  nothing  in  com-  Enthusiastic 
parison,"  were  so  grand  and  beautiful ;  the  waters  of  the  ^^^ 
lakes  and  rivers  were  so  sweet  and  placid ;  the  meadows  were  mere' 
so  inviting,  divided  asunder  into  "  little  iles  and  islets ; "  the  flowers 
of  such  delightful  hue  and  fragrance,  that  it  seemed  that  life  there 
must  be  passed  in  uninterrupted  happiness  and  pleasure.  And  the 
people,  apparently,  were  worthy  of  so  pleasant  a  land,  being  "  of  a 
natural  disposition  perfect  and  well  guided."  Athore,  the  eldest  son 
of  Satouriona,  was  "  gentle  and  tractable ;  perfect  in  beautie,  wise- 


198 


FRENCH   DISCOVERIES. 


[CHAP.   VIII. 


dome,  honest  sobrietie,  and  modest  grauitie."  The  chief  of  a  neigh 
boring  tribe  was  "  gratious  and  courteous,"  and  "  one  of  the  tallest 
men  and  best  proportioned  that  may  bee  founde;"  his  wife  a  model  as 
a  princess,  a  woman,  and  a  mother,  endowed  with  great  beauty,  "  of 
virtuous  countenance  and  modest  gravity,"  having  in  her  train  five 
graceful  daughters,  well  brought  up,  "  taught  well  and  straightly." 
That  they  none  of  them  wore  much  if  any  clothing  perhaps  added  to 
rather  than  took  from  the  glamour  of  this  arcadian  picture.  Life,  too, 
as  seemed  fitting,  was  prolonged  in  this  land  where  the  men  were 
noble  and  brave,  the  women  beautiful,  and  all  nature  bountiful.  The 
father  of  a  chief  was  found  whose  descendants  were  counted  to  the 
fifth  generation.  How  old  the  sire  was  is  not  stated  ;  but  his  vener 
able  son  numbered  two  hundred  and  fifty  years,  and  both  expected, 
unless  cut  off  by  a  violent  death,  to  live  thirty  or  forty  years  longer. 

Laudonniere,  after  sailing  a  few  leagues  along  the  coast,  returned 
to  the  River  of  May  without  going  to  Port   Royal,  having  heard,  no 
doubt,  either  from  the  Indians  or  before  leaving  France,  of  the  aban 
donment  of  Charles  Fort.     He  determined  to  settle  on  the 
Forte"™-      May,  rather  than  at  Port  Royal,  as  "  it  was  much  more  need- 
full  to  plant  in  places  plentifull  of  victual,  than  in  goodly 
havens,  faire,  deepe,  and  pleasant  to  the  view."     The  spot  chosen  was 

just  above  what  is 
now  known  as  St. 
John's  Bluff,  on  the 
bank  of  the  river.1 
At  break  of  day, 
the  trumpet  sound 
ed  to  assemble  the 
people  ;  a  Psalm 
of  thanksgiving  was 
sung  ;  the  blessing 
of  God  was  asked 
upon  their  enter 
prise,  and  then  all 
fell  to  work  with 
shovels,  cutting  - 
hooks  and  hatchets. 
The  fort  was  in  the  shape  of  a  triangle,  fronting  the  river,  with  the 
bluff  on  one  side,  a  marsh  on  the  other,  and  the  woods  in  the  rear. 
It  was  finished  in  a  few  days,  with  the  aid  of  Satouriona's  people, 
and  was  iiumed  Fort  Caroline,  in  honor  of  the  king,  Charles  IX.  of 
France. 

1  Parkman's  Pioneers  of  New  France.     Fairbanks'  History  of  St.  Augustine. 


Fort    Caroline.     [De   Bry.] 


1564.]  CUPIDITY   OF   THE   FRENCHMEN.  199 

They  could  handle  the  shovel  to  build  fortifications,  but  not  to  till 
the  ground.  As  in  the  first  colony,  no  seed  was  planted  ;  the  only 
harvest  thought  of  was  gold  and  silver.  The  experience  of  the  un 
fortunate  Port  Royalists  profited  them  nothing ;  if  they  considered  at 
all  the  advantage  which  numbers  gave  them,  it  was  only  that  they 
would  be  able  to  explore  the  farther,  and  use  them,  if  need  be,  in  the 
subjection  of  the  Indians,  in  acquiring  the  wealth  they  hoped  to  find. 
Expeditions  were  sent  from  time  to  time  into  the  interior,  always 
with  the  same  purpose.  Everywhere  gold  and  silver  were 

J  .  The  greed 

asked  for;  everywhere  was  the  same  answer:    it  was  some  for  gold  and 

silver 

chief  beyond  who  had  them  in  plenty,  and  against  that  par 
ticular  chief  the  informant  was  always  anxious  to  commence  hostil 
ities  with  the  aid  of  the  Frenchmen.  There  was  no  fable  telling  of  gold 
that  they  were  not  eager  to  swallow.  It  was  "  good  riewes  "  at  Fort 
Caroline  that  there  were  certain  Indians  who  covered  "  their  brests, 
armes,  thighes,  legs,  and  foreheads,  with  large  plates  of  gold  and  silver," 
as  protective  armor,  and  that  "  the  height  of  two  foot  of  gold  and  sil 
ver,"  would  be  the  booty  that  might  be  taken  from  the  least  of  the 
petty  chiefs' of  that  people.  Two  Spaniards  were  brought  to  the  Fort 
from  the  Gulf  coast,  where  they  had  been  shipwrecked  fifteen  years 
before  ;  they  reported  that  the  king  of  that  country  "  had  great  store 
of  gold  and  silver,  so  farre  forth  that  in  a  certaine  village  he  had  a 
pit  full  thereof,  which  was  at  the  least  as  high  as  a  man,  and  as  large 
as  a  tunne  ;  "  that  "  the  common  people  of  the  countrey  also  had  great 
store  thereof ;  "  that  "  the  women  going  to  dance,  did  weare  about 
their  girdles  plates  of  gold  as  broad  as  a  sawcer,  and  in  such  number 
that  the  weight  did  hinder  them  to  dance  at  their  ease  ;  and  that  the 
men  ware  the  like  also."  While  the  cupidity  of  the  Frenchmen  was 
inflamed  with  such  stories,  there  could  be  no  useful  industry  and  no 
steady  discipline.  Promises  to  the  chiefs  of  rendering  aid  in  their 
attacks  upon  their  neighbors,  were  kept  or  broken,  as  either  course 
seemed  most  likely  to  further  the  search  for  treasure.  It  was  a  trial 
of  cunning  with  the  native  chiefs,  in  which,  on  the  whole,  the  savages 
came  off  the  best ;  for  they  were  sometimes  enabled,  by  the  help  of 
the  Christians,  to  add  to  their  store  of  scalps,  while  the  promised 
riches  which  the  Christians  coveted,  were  still  to  be  got  by  some  new 
expedition.  "  The  mountaine  of  Apalichi,"  which  they  soon  learned 
to  believe  was  the  source  of  the  precious  metals  they  were  in  search 
of,  seemed  after  every  fight  to  be  as  distant  as  ever. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

FRENCH   AND    SPANISH   COLONISTS   IN   FLORIDA. 

PLOTS  AGAINST  THE  FRENCH  GOVERNOR  LAUDONNIERE.  —  OPEN  MUTINY  IN  HIS 
COLONY.  —  FIGHT  WITH  INDIANS.  —  VISIT  OF  AN  ENGLISH  FLEET  TO  PORT  ROYAL. 
—  ARRIVAL  OF  RIBAULT  WITH  A  FLEET  OF  SEVEN  SHIPS.  —  CRUSADE  OF  PEDRO 
MENENDEZ  AGAINST  HERETICS.  —  His  ATTACK  ON  FORT  CAROLINE.  —  SLAUGHTER 

OF  KlBAULT  AND  HIS  MEN  BY  THE  SPANIARDS. FOUNDING  OF  THE  FlRST  PER 
MANENT  SETTLEMENT  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.  —  INDIGNATION  OF  THE  FRENCH  AT 
THE  SPANISH  ATROCITIES.  —  DOMINIQUE  DE  GOURGUES  GOES  TO  FLORIDA.  —  HE 
MAKES  ALLIES  OF  THE  SAVAGES.  —  ATTACK  ON  THE  SPANISH  FORT.  —  THE 
BLOODY  RETALIATION.  —  A  SPANISH  MISSION  ON  THE  RAPPAHANNOCK. 

DISAPPOINTMENT    in    these    extravagant   hopes    and   ill-directed 
efforts  soon  led  to  the  inevitable  results.     Discontent  and  insubordina 
tion  showed  themselves  in  the  fort ;  Laudonniere  was  blamed 
tioninFort    for  want  of  energy  and  enterprise,  and  a  plot  was  formed  to 

Caroline.  II-TC  r\         T       Tt 

depose  mm  and  even  to  take  his  lite.  One  La  Roquette  pre 
tended  to  have  discovered  by  magic  a  mine  of  gold  and  silver,  far  up 
the  river,  which  he  promised  should  yield  ten  thousand  crowns  each 
to  the  soldiers  who  should  take  it,  besides  a  reserve  of  fifteen  hundred 
thousand  for  the  king.  Genre,  a  trusted  friend  of  Laudonniere,  was, 
with  Roquette,  the  head  of  this  conspiracy,  and  many  of  the  soldiers 
were  fascinated  with  the  old  delusion  in  fresher  and  more  captivating 
colors  than  ever.  But  to  reach  this  wonderful  mine  it  was  necessary 
first  to  dispose  of  the  captain  ;  for  he  held  the  key  of  the  store-house, 
was  rigidly  economical  of  provision,  was  obeyed  and  trusted  by  many 
of  the  soldiers,  and  was  an  obstacle  generally  in  the  way  of  any  plan 
whereby  every  man  in  the  colony  was  to  do  just  as  he  pleased  with 
out  regard  to  anybody  else.  It  was  proposed  to  the  apothecary  to 
give  him  enough  arsenic  or  quicksilver  "  to  make  mee,"  says  Laudon 
niere  himself,  "  pitch  ouer  the  pearch  ;  "  the  master  of  the  fire-works 
was  asked  to  put  a  keg  of  gunpowder  under  his  bed.  But  neither 
proposition  found  favor  in  the  eyes  of  those  scrupulous  officers ;  ex 
posure  speedily  followed,  and  the  conspirators  were  punished  on  the 
spot  or  sent  back  to  France. 

But  the  fire  was   only   smothered,  not  extinguished.     Other  mal- 


1564.] 


A   PIRATICAL   VOYAGE. 


201 


contents  soon  after  stole  two  small  vessels,  the  only  ones  the  colony 
possessed  for  excursions  into  the  interior,  and  made  off  to 
the  West  India  Islands  for  a  piratical  voyage  on  their  own  nee^seize 
account.     Two  other  and  larger  vessels  were  built  as  soon  as 
possible,  but  were  no  sooner  ready  for  sea  than  they  also  were  seized, 
the   mutineers,  this   time,  being  strong  enough  to  imprison  Laudon- 
niere  and  compel  him  to  sign  a  roving  commission  authorizing  them 
to  make  a  cruise  among  the  Spanish  colonies.     By  robbing  churches 
and  seizing  treasure-ships  they  hoped  to  so  enrich  themselves  as  to  be 
independent  even  of  government  at  home,  if  their  acts  should  be  re 
pudiated.     But  the  fate  which  so  often  followed  buccaneers  attended 
them.     They  soon  quarrelled   over  the   booty  they  easily  acquired ; 


Arrest  of  the  Pirates. 

three  of  the  vessels  finally  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Spaniards  ;  the 
fourth,  steered  by  a  pilot  who,  with  some  of  the  sailors,  had  been  com^ 
pelled  against  his  will  to  go  in  her,  was  brought  back  by  his  skillful 
management  to  Fort  Caroline,  when  Laudonnie"re  had  the  satisfaction 
of  seizing  the  ringleaders  and  punishing  them  with  death. 

In  the  spring  a  new  enemy  beset  them,  whose  coming  should  have 
been  foreseen  —  "  ignominious  hunger."     The  provisions  they  brought 


202  FRENCH    AND   SPANISH   IN   FLORIDA.  [CHAP.  IX. 

with  them  were  exhausted,  and  they  could  no   longer  rely  upon   the 
stock   of  corn  and  beans  which  the  Indians  had  laid  up  for 

Famine  at-  ,  n  . . . .        ,  .    _  . 

tacks  the  winter  use,  as  they  parted  unwillingly  with  any  portion  of 
their  small  remainder.  Trinkets  and  clothing,  with  which 
they  had  become  familiar,  diminished  in  value  in  the  eyes  of  the 
savages,  and  they  knew  from  experience  how  to  measure  with  accu 
racy  the  wasting  corn-heaps  by  the  months  still  to  elapse  before  the 
ripening  of  the  new  corn.  Less  thoughtful  than  the  Indians,  the  col 
onists  had  provided  for  no  scarcity,  and  looked  forward  to  no  harvest, 
depending  alone  upon  succor  from  France,  as  their  unfortunate  coun 
trymen  had  done  before  them.  Day  by  day,  they  climbed  the  hill 
and  scanned  the  horizon  in  vain  for  a  sight  of  the  returning  ships ;  and 
day  by  day  their  flesh  wasted  away,  their  bones  pierced  the  skin,  and 
hardly  strength  was  left  them  to  gather  sorrel  and  dig  the  few  edible 
roots  they  could  find  in  the  woods  wherewith  to  keep  the  life  in  their 
miserable  bodies.  Driven  to  this  extremity  they  clamored  to  be  led 
back  to  France,  though  not  one  of  their  two  or  three  small  vessels  was 
large  enough  to  carry  the  whole  company,  or  fit  to  encounter  the 
perils  of  such  a  voyage. 

It  was  the  time  of  planting,  and  they  could  as  easily  have  waited 
for  the  ripening  of  fruit  and  grain  and  have  thus  made  themselves 
self-sustaining  and  independent  of  all  outside  aid  for  the  future,  as  pro 
vide  for  the  three  months  it  would  take  to  build  another  ship.  But 
they  thought  of  nothing,  cared  for  nothing,  but  to  get  away.  A  new 
ship,  therefore,  must  be  built,  and  they  devoted  such  strength  as  they 
had  left  to  that  work.  Meantime,  they  were  in  want  of  food.  For 
aging  expeditions  among  the  Indians  only  ended  in  disappointment ; 
the  hungry  crowd  surrounded  Laudonniere,  demanding  that  he  should 
seize  one  of  the  neighboring  chiefs  and  hold  him  to  be  ransomed  in 
corn  and  other  provision.  "  Shall  it  not  be  lawful  for  vs,"  they  said, 
"  to  punish  them  for  the  wrong  they  doe  unto  vs,  beside  that  we  know 
apparently  how  little  they  respect  vs."  The  wrongs  were  that  the 
Indians  were  too  prudent  to  part  with  the  stores  which  were  hardly 
sufficient  for  their  own  support  till  the  new  corn  was  fit  to  gather  ;  the 
want  of  respect  was  the  unconcealed  contempt  they  felt  for  these 
civilized  paupers  who  permitted  themselves  to  be  reduced  to  this 
pitiful  extremity. 

The  remedy  proposed  did  not  commend  itself  to  Laudonniere's 
judgment,  but  he  was  compelled  to  yield  to  the  clamor  around  him. 
injustice  to  Outmai  or>e  of  their  kings,  was  seized  amid  the  lamentations 
the  Indians.  of  £]ie  women  ant|  the  cries  for  vengeance  from  the  men  of 
his  tribe.  The  treacherous  act,  as  Laudonniere  expected,  failed  to 
arouse  either  the  fears  or  the  generosity  of  the  Indians  ;  but  it  in- 


1565. J 


ARRIVAL   OF   AN  ENGLISH   FLEET. 


203 


flamed  to  the  last  degree  their  cunning  and  ferocity.  Under  pretence 
of  providing  for  the  ransom  of  their  chief,  they  led  the  Frenchmen 
into  an  ambuscade,  out  of  which  they  escaped,  after  a  hard  day's  fight, 
with  only  two  bags  of  corn,  while  two  of  their  men  were  killed  and 
twenty-two  wounded.  Incapable  of  the  industry  and  wanting  in  the 


Fight  with    Indians. 

forethought  indispensable  to  the  successful  colonist,  they  could  still 
acquit  themselves,  weak  as  they  were,  with  honor  as  soldiers. 

As  the  season  advanced  food  became  more  plentiful,  and  grain  was 
gathered  for  the  homeward  voyage   in  August,  1565.     On   the  third 
day  of  that  month,  however,  Laudonniere,  ever  on  the  watch  for  aid 
from  home,  saw  from  the  look-out  on  the  bluff  a  fleet  ap 
proaching.     At  the  fort  "  they  were  so  glad  of  those  newes,   English  fleet 

that  one  would  haue  thought  them  to  bee  out  of  their  wittes  John  Haw 
kins, 
to  see  them  laugh  and  leape  for  joy."     Their  joy  was  so  far 

premature,  that  the  ships  were  English,  not  French,  though  otherwise, 
as  the  event  proved,  they  had  equal  cause  for  thankfulness. 

The  fleet  was  commanded  by  Sir  John  Hawkins,  now  returning 
from  a  second  and  profitable  vo}rage  to  the  coast  of  Guinea,  where  he 
had  learned  three  years  before  that  "  store  of  Negros  might  be  had," 


204  FRENCH   AND   SPANISH  IN   FLORIDA.  [CHAP.  IX. 

and  that  they  "  were  very  good  marchandise  in  Hispaniola."  l  He 
was  not  deaf  or  blind  to  the  claims  of  humanity  in  white  men,  and 
took  pity  on  the  sore  distress  of  the  French  colony,  relieving  not  only 
their  present  wants,  but  offering  to  transport  them  to  France.  There 
was  great  "  bruite  and  mutiny  "  when  Laudonniere  declined  the  offer, 
and  the  soldiers  threatened  that  they  would  go  without  him.  A  com 
promise  at  last  was  made,  and  one  of  the  English  vessels  was  pur 
chased,  with  sufficient  provision  for  the  voyage.  Hawkins  made  some 
generous  additions  by  gift,  and  then  left  them  with  renewed  life  and 
hope  at  this  unexpected  and  timely  relief,  having  won  among  them, 
says  Laudonniere,  "  the  reputation  of  a  good  and  charitable  man 
deseruing  to  be  esteemed  as  much  of  vs  all  as  if  he  saued  all  our 
Hues." 

In  a  few  days  they  were  ready  to  sail,  and  waited  only  a  fair  wind, 
when,  on  the  28th  of  August,  another  fleet  was  seen  approaching. 
The  long-expected  aid  had  come  at  last  from  France.  Seven 
Ribauit's  ships  anchored  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  with  three  hun 
dred  men  on  board,  under  the  command  of  Ribault  himself. 
Amid  the  salutes  of  cannon,  the  greetings  of  old  friends  and  com 
panions,  the  welcome  to  fellow-countrymen  who  were  looked  on  as 
deliverers,  there  was  one  man  who  was  crushed  by  this  arrival  with  a 
sense  of  new  misfortune,  and,  the  hardest  of  all  things  to  bear,  of 
cruel  injustice  in  return  for  a  self-sacrificing  and  faithful  discharge  of 
duty. 

This  was  Laudonniere,  who  soon  learned  that  the  discontented  and 
insubordinate  persons,  whom  he  had  sent  back  to  France  the  year 
before,  had  brought  accusations  against  him  of  an  unwarrantable  as 
sumption  of  power  and  tyrannical  behavior  in  the  colony,  and  that 
these  had  been  listened  to  by  Admiral  Coligny.  Ribault  was  sent  to 
take  command  in  his  place,  and  he  was  recalled  to  answer  for  his  con 
duct.  When  we  remember  the  many  difficulties  he  had  had  to  en 
counter  ;  the  extravagant  expectations  of  sudden  wealth  which  had 
possessed  his  followers  and  the  consequent  disappointment  and  discon 
tent  ;  the  mutinies  he  had  been  compelled  to  submit  to  or  to  quell  ; 
the  calamity  of  famine  he  had  been  called  upon  to  relieve  ;  the  war 
with  the  Indians  into  which  he  was  forced  against  his  better  judg 
ment  ;  and  that  through  all  he  had  held  the  colony  together  and  saved 
unjust  com-  ^  from  absolute  destruction,  it  is  much  easier  to  believe  that 
against  Lau-  ne  was  unfortunate  than  in  fault.  But  his  disgrace  over- 
aonntere.  whelmed  him,  and  he  makes  a  touching,  though  unconscious 
appeal  to  all  human  sympathy,  in  the  record  of  his  state  at  this 

1  See  Voifaqes  of  the  right  worshipful  and  valiant  Kniyht  Sir  John  Hawkins.  Hakluyt's 
Voyayes,  vol.  iii. 


1565.] 


EXPEDITION   OF  PEDRO  MENENDEZ. 


205 


point  of  his  sad  story,  that  "  weakened  with  my  former  trauaile,  and 
fallen  into  a  melancholy  vpon  the  false  reports  that  had  bene  made  of 
mee,  I  fell  into  a  great  continuall  feuer."  It  was  doubtless  a  satis 
faction  to  him  to  be  assured  that  his  friends  among  the  new-comers 
were  at  once  satisfied  that  the  accusations  against  him  were  malicious, 
and  had  no  foundation  in  truth ;  that  Ribault  begged  him  not  to  leave 
the  colony,  and  generously  offered  to  build  another  fortress  for  his 
own  company,  and  to  leave  him  unmolested  in  command  of  Fort 
Caroline.  But  Laudonniere  felt  too  keenly  the  impeachment  of  his 
honor  and  character,  to  accede  to  any  proposition  but  implicit  obe 
dience  to  the  orders  from  home,  and  an  immediate  return  to  France 
to  meet  his  accusers  face  to  face.  But  misfortune  had  not  yet  done 
with  him.  Calamities  yet  to  come  were  to  sweep  away  all  question, 
for  a  time  all  memory,  of  his  past  administration  of  affairs. 

Only  a  week  had  passed,  when  a  third  fleet  appeared,  silently  and 
suddenly  in  the  night-time  at  the  mouth  of  the  River  of  May. 
When  hailed  as   to  who  they  were  and  what  they  wanted,  of  Pedro 
the  answer  was  that  they  were  from  Spain ;  that  Pedro  Me- 
nendez  was  in  command  ;  and  that  he  had  come  in  obedience  to  the 
king  to  burn  and  destroy  such  Lutheran  French  as  should  be  found  in 
his  dominions.1     An  attack  was  to 
have  been  made  in  the  morning. 
Three  of  Ribault's  ships  had  gone 
up  the  river  to  Fort  Caroline ;  the 
other  four  were  no  match  for  the 
Spaniards,  and  had  no  alternative 
but  to  slip  their  cables  and  stand 
out  to  sea.   They  not  only  outsailed 
the  Spanish  vessels,  but  turned  and 
followed  them,  when  the  chase  was 
relinquished,  and  watched  their  en 
trance  into  the  River  of  Dolphins, 
a  few  leagues  southward,  and  the 
landing   of   men,    provisions,    ord 
nance,  and  ammunition. 

This  expedition  of  Menendez  was  esteemed  in  Spain  as  almost  a 
new  crusade.     There  was  no  lack  of  either  men  or  means  in 

.  1  i   •  ••(•!•  i  Spanish  zeal 

so  holy  an  undertaking  as  the  extermination  ot  heretics,  who,   against 

i     .  .    .  .   .  heretics. 

with  their  pernicious  doctrines,  were  sure  to  vitiate  the  pure 
minds  of  the  Indians  of  the  New  World,  stain  their  white  souls  with 
ineffaceable  evil,  and  lead  them  to  perdition.     This  fervent  religious 
zeal,  coupled  with  the  execution  and  approval   of  the  most  frightful 
1  MS.  Letter  of  Menendez  to  the  King  ;  Parkman's  Pioneers,  etc.,  p.  100. 


Pedro  Menendez. 


206  FRENCH   AND   SPANISH  IN   FLORIDA.  [CHAP.  IX. 

* 
atrocities,  was  perfectly  in  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  times ; 

but  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  determination  of  the  Spaniards  to 
destroy,  in  the  name  of  God,  a  handful  of  people  in  the  wilderness, 
because  they  were  heretics,  may  have  been  inflamed  by  the  piracies 
which  the  mutineers,  who  stole  Laudonniere's  ships,  had  committed  in 
the  West  Indies.  Menendez  himself,  however,  was  a  bigot,  who 
could  conceive  of  no  better  manifestation  of  love  to  God  than  cruelty 
to  man,  when  man  was  heretical ;  whose  scent  for  blood  was  unerring 
as  that  of  the  most  ferocious  wild  beast ;  whose  treacherous  cunning 
character  of  m  approaching  and  seizing  his  prey,  was  the  keenest  animal 
Menendez.  instinct,  sharpened  to  the  utmost  degree  by  human  intel 
ligence.  He  undoubtedly  looked  upon  his  enterprise  as  a  sacred  mis 
sion,  and,  when  on  his  outward  voyage  his  fleet  had  been  scattered  by 
a  storm,  he  insisted  upon  proceeding  with  only  a  part  of  his  force,  de 
claring  that  it  was  evidently  God's  will  that  the  victory  he  was  to 
achieve  should  be  due,  not  to  numbers,  but  to  the  Divine  assistance. 
But  the  most  intense  religious  bigotry  condescends  to  worldly  wis 
dom,  and  there  is  little  doubt  that  information  had  been  sent  to  Spain 
by  some  of  the  Catholics  of  the  French  court  that  reinforcements  were 
about  to  go  to  Fort  Caroline  under  Ribault,  and  that  the  zeal  of 
Menendez  was  quickened  by  that  intelligence  to  fall  upon  the  here 
tics  before  this  assistance  could  reach  them. 

When  the  report  was  taken  back  to  Fort  Caroline,  that  the  Span- 
Ribauit  de-  iai'ds  had  left  their  ships,  Ribault  proposed  at  once  to  fall 
fovvthe  fo1  uP°n  them  with  all  his  force  before  they  had  time  to  fortify 
Spaniards,  themselves  on  shore,  and  overcome  them  while  in  a  defence 
less  condition.  Laudonnicre,  on  the  other  hand,  urged  that  there  was 
great  danger  of  sudden  storms  at  that  season  on  that  coast,  which 
might  defeat  such  an  expedition  by  disabling  the  ships,  or  driving 
them  to  sea,  while  a  prolonged  absence  of  the  soldiers  would  leave 
Fort  Caroline  defenceless,  and  exposed  to  attack  by  the  Spaniards. 
His  counsel,  as  the  event  proved,  was  wise,  but  it  was  unheeded. 
Ribault  sailed  with  all  the  larger  vessels  and  nearly  all  the  effective 
men  at  his  command.  He  left  behind  him  at  Fort  Caroline  about  two 
hundred  and  forty  persons,  including  the  sick,  the  women,  and  the 
children,  but  among  them  all  a  very  few  only  were  able  to  bear 
arms.1 

As  Laudonnicre  feared,  Ribault  and  his  ships  were  scattered  by  a 
sudden  and  violent  tempest  just  as  they  were  about  to  attack  the 
enemy  at  the  mouth  of  the  River  of  Dolphins  —  an  event  which  was 

1  Challeux's  Discours  de  VHistoire  de  la  Floride  —  better  known  as  "the  carpenter's  nar 
rative,"  gives  two  hundred  and  forty  as  the  number  of  persons  left  in  the  fort,  but  Laudon 
niere's  estimate  is  much  smaller. 


1565.]         BLOODTHIRSTY   ATTACK   ON  FORT   CAROLINE.  207 

hailed  by  the  Spaniards  as  another  providential  interposition  in  their 
favor.  This  miscarriage  of  Ribault  was  the  opportunity  of  Plan  of 
Menendez,  and  he  lost  no  time  in  availing  himself  of  it.  Menendez- 
From  the  Indians  he  learned  that  many  of  the  men  had  embarked 
upon  the  French  vessels,  and  he  proposed  to  proceed  at  once  overland 
to  the  attack  of  Fort  Caroline,  trusting  to  reach  it  before  the  fleet 
could  return.  To  many  of  his  companions  it  seemed  a  foolhardy 
enterprise  to  march  through  unknown  forests  and  swamps,  to  attack  a 
fortress  of  whose  strength  and  the  number  of  whose  defenders  they 
were  ignorant,  and  when  defeat  would  probably  be  fatal  alike  to  those 
who  went  upon  the  expedition  and  those  who  were  left  behind.  But 
Menendez,  confident  in  his  judgment,  invincible  in  his  fanaticism,  was 
firm  in  his  purpose.  Fort  Caroline,  he  was  sure,  was  almost  defence 
less  ;  it  would  be  easy  to  find  the  way  through  the  woods  by  the  com 
pass  ;  by  making  an  attack  when  least  expected,  success  was  certain ; 
and  finally,  he  said,  "  we  shall  the  more  speedily  do  a  service  to  our 
God  and  our  king,  and  comply  with  our  conscience  and  our  duty." 

On  the  morning  of  September  the  17th  five  hundred  men  were 
drawn  out  upon  the  beach,  a  mass  was  said,  and  the  march  began.  At 
the  moment  of  starting  two  Indians,  who  had  recently  come 

..  J       .  .          March  on 

from  Fort  Caroline,  appeared,  and  were  secured  as  guides  Fortcaro- 
across  the  country,  and  a  French  deserter  was  to  show  them 
where  the  fortress  could  be  most  easily  approached  and  most  success 
fully  assaulted.  For  two  days  they  struggled  through  the  woods  and 
morasses,  exposed  to  heavy  rains,  sometimes  wading  to  their  waists, 
in  danger  of  losing  the  ammunition  and  provision  which  each  man 
carried  on  his  back,  —  a  cold,  wet,  hungry,  disconsolate,  and  grumb 
ling  throng  of  stragglers  held  to  any  military  duty  or  purpose  only 
by  the  iron  will  of  one  man.  They  reached  the  fort  in  the  night  of 
the  second  day,  and  halting  in  water  up  to  their  knees,  the  pitiless 
storm  beating  upon  their  heads,  they  waited  for  daylight. 

The  cold  and  drenching  rain  had  driven  the  sentinels  of  the  feeble 
garrison  to  shelter.  One  man  only  was  found  at  his  post,  and  he  was 
seized  and  speedily  put  to  death  by  a  reconnoitring  party  that  ad 
vanced  with  the  first  glimmer  of  daylight.  Then  the  Spaniards  poured 
through  breaches  in  the  palisades  with  cries  of  "  Santiago  !  Victory  ! 
God  is  with  us  ! "  There  was  little  fighting  ;  only  slaughter. 
The  panic-stricken  Frenchmen,  aroused  from  sleep  by  the  attack  of  the 
Spanish  war-cry,  confused  by  the  darkness  and  by  the  sud 
denness  of  the  attack,  sought  only,  each  for  himself,  to  escape  and  find 
shelter  in  the  woods  and  swamps.  Neither  sex  nor  age  was  spared, 
according  to  the  French  accounts ;  but  the  Spanish  relations  declare 
that  quarter  was  given  to  the  women,  and  children  under  fifteen  years 


208 


FRENCH   AND   SPANISH   IN   FLORIDA.  [CHAP.  IX. 


of  age.  Some  were  taken  prisoners,  apparently  only  from  a  refinement 
of  cruelty,  for  they  were  all  hanged  a  few  hours  later.  Over  their 
heads  Menendez  put  this  inscription,  "  I  do  this,  not  as  to  Frenchmen, 
but  as  to  Lutherans." 

The  whole  number  thus  massacred  in  the  name  of  religion  was  one 

hundred  and  forty-two.     Those  who  escaped  made  their  way 
of1  the  through  the  marshes  to  the  two  vessels  that  Ribault  had  left 

behind   him.      Among   these  was    Laudonniere,    who    was 
found  the  morning  after  the  attack,  held  up  by  a  soldier,  in  water  to 


Rescue    of    Laudonniere. 


the  arm-pits,  where  they  had  passed  the  night.  When  this  wretched 
remnant  of  the  colony  was  rescued,  the  vessels,  which  a  nephew  of  Ri 
bault  commanded,  sailed  for  France  without  waiting  for  tidings  of  the 
expedition  to  the  River  of  Dolphins. 


1565.]  FATE    OF   THE   WRECKED   FRENCHMEN.  209 

Thus  far  Menendez  was  crowned  with  complete  success.  "  We  owe," 
he  said,  "  to  God  and  His  mother,  more  than  to  human  strength,  this 
victory  over  the  adversaries  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Religion."1  Not  a 
heretic  Frenchman  was  left  alive  on  the  River  of  May,  and  that  even 
the  memory  of  them  might  be  wiped  out,  the  names  of  the  river  and 
the  fort  were  changed  to  San  Mateo  by  these  devout  Spaniards,  the 
nearest  saint-day,  that  of  St.  Matthew,  being  on  the  21st  day  of  Sep 
tember.  Taking  fifty  soldiers  with  him  Menendez  returned  to  his 
encampment  at  the  mouth  of  the  River  of  Dolphins.  A  messenger  had 
been  sent  forward  to  announce  his  success  and  his  coming,  and  the 
whole  camp  turned  out  to  meet  him  in  procession  with  priests  at  their 
head  in  full  canonicals,  chanting  a  Te  Deum,  and  bearing  a  crucifix. 
The  Adelantado  and  his  followers  knelt  before  and  kissed  the  cross, 
giving  thanks  to  God  that  He  had  enabled  them  to  extirpate  his  ene 
mies  and  theirs. 

The  next  anxiety  of  Menendez  was  to  know  what  had  become  of  the 
other  heretics  on  board  of  Ribault's  ships.  Nor  had  he  long  to  wait. 
Intelligence  was  soon  brought  in  by  the  Indians  that  the  Frenchmen 

0  «/ 

were  wrecked  on  Anastasia  Island,  a  little  to  the  southwai'd.     Pro 
ceeding;  thither  with  fifty  soldiers,  Menendez  found  a  party 

The  fate  of 

of  from  one  hundred  and  fifty  to  two  hundred  men,  to  whom  the  wrecked 
he  made  himself  known.  Thrown  by  the  storm  upon  this 
desolate  beach,  exhausted  from  want  of  food  and  rest,  with  no  means 
of  escape  or  of  subsistence,  they  appealed  to  his  humanity  to  aid  them 
in  reaching  a  place  of  refuge  at  their  fort,  Caroline.  Were  they  Cath 
olics  or  Lutherans  ?  he  asked.  They  replied  that  they  were  all  of 
the  Reformed  Religion.  Then  he  told  them  that  their  fort  was  de 
stroyed,  and  all  its  men  were  put  to  the  sword.  As  to  themselves,  he 
said,  that  being  of  the  new  faith  "  he  held  them  for  enemies,  and  would 
wage  war  upon  them  even  to  blood  and  to  fire,  would  pursue  them  with 
all  cruelty  wherever  he  should  encounter  them  in  whatever  sea  or  land." 
They  begged  that  he  would  give  them  shelter  till  succor  could  be  sent 
them  from  France,  which  was  at  peace  with  Spain.  His  answer  was  : 
"  They  could  give  up  their  arms  and  place  themselves  under  my  mercy, 
—  that  I  should  do  with  them  what  our  Lord  should  order ;  and  from 
that  I  did  not  depart,  nor  would  I,  unless  God  our  Lord  should  other 
wise  inspire."2  Then  they  offered  him  fifty  thousand  ducats  to  spare 
their  lives  ;  but  he  was  inexorable,  and  they,  not  knowing  how  small 
his  force  was,  —  perhaps  misled  by  the  courtesy  with  which  he  treated 
their  messengers,  —  accepted  the  only  alternative  that  seemed  left  to 

1  MS.  Letter  from  Menendez  to  the  King,  in  Parkman's  Pioneers  of  France. 

2  Ibid. 


210  THE   FRENCH   AND   SPANISH  IN   FLORIDA.      [CHAP.  IX. 

them,  and  surrendered  unconditionally,  giving  up  their  arms  and  stand 
ards. 

An  inlet  divided  the  two  parties,  and  the  treacherous  Spaniard  or 
dered  that  the  Frenchmen  should  be  brought  over  in  companies  of  ten. 
As  each   squad  arrived  they  were   told  that  as  they  were 

Themur-  J   Ii      •  t  •  <-  1J    l 

derof  many,  and  their  captors  were  tew,  it  would  be  necessary,  as 

a  prudent  and  rational  precaution,  that  the  prisoners  should 
be  bound  before  they  were  marched  together  to  the  Spanish  encamp 
ment.  They  were  led  then  behind  a  sand-hill,  out  of  sight  of  their 
fellows  on  the  other  shore,  and  their  hands  securely  tied  behind  their 
backs  with  bow-strings.  When  toward  night-fall  all  were  gath 
ered  together,  they  were  marched  a  short  distance  to  a  spot  which  the 
adelantado  himself  had  chosen  and  marked  upon  the  sand  with  a  spear. 
Once  more  the  fatal  question  was  asked :  Were  they  all  Lutherans  ? 
A  dozen,  who  professed  to  be  Catholics,  and  four  others,  who  were  calk- 
ers  and  carpenters,  and  whose  services  were  needed,  were  led  aside.  A 
few  moments  later,  of  all  the  rest, —  all  bound,  not  able  even  to  raise 
an  unarmed  hand  to  ward  off  a  blow,  —  not  one  was  left  alive. 

A  cruel  and  inexorable  fate  seemed  to  pursue  the  wretched  French 
men.  The  sand  could  hardly  have  soaked  up  the  blood  of  the  men  so 
treacherously  murdered,  or  the  murderers  have  reached  their  camp  a 
few  miles  distant,  when  Ribault  himself,  with  the  rest  of  his  followers, 
arrived  at  the  spot  whence  the  others  had,  only  a  few  hours  before, 
been  betrayed  to  their  death.  Menendez  heard  of  it  the 

Ribault  cap-  J  . 

turedby        morning  after  his  return,  and  hurried  back  again  to  the  inlet. 

Menendez.  i      •  i  i  IT  ••  <•    i  • 

As  before  he  made  such  disposition  of  his  men  as  to  com 
pletely  deceive  the  French,  who  knew  nothing  of  the  movements  of 
the  Spanish  soldiers  since  their  landing  ;  as  before,  when  aid  was 
asked  to  enable  the  shipwrecked  men  to  reach  Fort  Caroline,  the 
answer  was  that  the  fort  had  been  taken  and  its  people  put  to  the 
sword ;  and  to  convince  Ribault  that  he  was  completely  at  the  mercy 
of  his  enemy,  he  was  led  aside  and  shown  the  pile  of  the  unburied 
corpses  of  his  murdered  countrymen.  Nevertheless,  the  Frenchmen 
apparently  would  not  believe  that  Menendez  was  absolutely  want 
ing  in  all  humane  instincts,  and  when  a  ransom  of  a  hundred  thou 
sand  ducats  was  offered  for  their  lives,  they  had,  or  thought  they  had, 
a  pledge  for  their  safety.  The  Spanish  narratives  assert  that  no  such 
pledge  was  given,  while  the  French  declare  that  he  bound  himself  by 
an  oath  to  spare  their  lives ;  but  at  best,  the  answers  of  Menendez 
were  only  equivocal,  and  meant  to  betray.  Of  the  three  hundred 
and  fifty  Frenchmen,  however,  only  one  hundred  and  fifty,  with 
Ribault  at  their  head,  offered  to  surrender ;  the  rest  refused,  and 
marched  southward. 


1565.] 


DEATH    OF   RIBAULT. 


211 


The  stratagems  of  the  day  before  were  again  resorted  to.  In 
squads  of  ten,  the  Frenchmen  were  brought  across  the  inlet ;  these 
detachments,  on  landing,  were  taken  out  of  sight  of  those  yet  to  come, 
and  their  hands  bound  behind  their  backs  as  a  pretended  precaution 
for  a  coming  march  ;  when  all  were  thus  secured,  they  were  led  to  the 
spot  where  lay  the  bodies  of  their  countrymen  on  the  blood-red  sand. 
If  there  was  still  any  lingering  doubt  or  hope  in  the  minds  of  the 
wretched  and  betrayed  men,  it  was  dispelled  by  the  questions,  which, 
to  Menendez,  had  but  one  significance  —  were  they  Catholics  or  Lu 
therans  ?  and  were  there  any  among  them  who  wished  to  make  confes 
sion  ?  Ribault  answered  that  they  were  all  of  the  Reformed  D(;ath  of 
Faith.  Then,  after  repeating  the  Psalm,  Domine  memento  Rlbault- 
mei,  he  said,  "  that  from  dust  they  came  and  to  dust  they  must  return  ; 


Massacre  of  Ribault. 


twenty  years  more  or  less  could  matter  but  little  ;  and  that  the  ade- 
lantado  could  do  with  them  as  he  chose."  Two  youths  of  eighteen 
years  of  age,  and  the  fifers,  trumpeters,  and  drummers  were  spared. 
The  rest  were  "put  to  the  sword,  judging  this,"  says  Menendez,  in 
his  letter  to  the  king,  "  to  be  expedient  for  the  service  of  God  our 
Lord,  and  of  your  majesty." 

That  God  would  be  pleased,  he  takes  for  granted  ;  why  the  king 


212  FRENCH   AND   SPANISH   IN   FLORIDA.  [CHAP.  IX. 

should  be,  he  gives  a  reason ;  for  he  adds  :  "  I  consider  it  great  good 
fortune  that  he  (Ribault)  should  be  dead,  for  the  King  of  France 
could  effect  more  with  him  and  five  hundred  ducats  than  with  other 
men  and  five  thousand,  and  he  would  do  more  in  one  year  than 
another  in  ten,  for  he  was  the  most  experienced  sailor  and  naval 
commander  known,  and  of  great  skill  in  this  navigation  of  the  Indies 
and  the  coast  of  Florida.  He  was,  besides,  greatly  liked  in  England, 
in  which  kingdom  his  reputation  was  such  that  he  was  appointed 
Captain-General  of  all  the  English  fleet,  against  the  French  Cath 
olics  in  the  war  between  England  and  France,  some  years  ago." 
Even  the  savage  has  magnanimity  enough  to  honor  the  dead  in  whose 
living  presence  he  may  have  trembled  ;  but  that  his  enemy  was  to 
be  feared  in  life,  was  with  Menendez,  a  reason  for  treating  his  dead 
body  with  indignity.  The  flowing  beard  of  Ribault,  which  had 
excited  the  wonder  and  admiration  of  the  Indians,  was  cut  off  and 
sent  to  Spain  as  a  trophy  ;  and  his  head,  divided  into  four  quarters, 
was  stuck  up  on  lances  at  the  four  corners  of  the  fort  at  the  River  of 
Dolphins.1  The  place  of  the  cruel  and  treacherous  massacre  is  known, 
to  this  day,  as  "  the  bloody  river  of  Matanzas."  2 

There  were  two  hundred  men  still  at  large  somewhere  in  Florida. 
These  were  soon  after  heard  of  at  a  point  farther  down  the  coast. 
They  had  entrenched  themselves  behind  some  temporary  defences,  and 
from  the  materials  of  a  wrecked  vessel  were  building  an- 
nant  of  iu-  other  in  which  to  return  to  France.  The  adelantado  marched 
made  prison-  thither  and  attacked  them  ;  the  fort  was  destroyed,  and  the 
unfinished  ship  burnt.  Most  of  the  men  surrendered  under 
a  promise  that  their  lives  should  be  spared  ;  but  a  score  of  them,  with 
the  captain,  escaped  to  the  woods,  declaring  that  they  would  take  the 
chance  of  being  eaten  by  savages  rather  than  trust  themselves  to  any 
pledge  of  Spanish  faith.  Menendez  evidently  did  not  think  the  im 
molation  of  the  heretics  who  now  surrendered,  necessary  to  the  glory 
of  God  and  his  mother  ;  nor  was  their  number  sufficient  to  excite  any 
fears  for  the  safety  of  his  colony.  These  prisoners,  therefore,  he  held 
to  the  order  of  the  king,  instead  of  assassinating  them  the  moment 
they  were  in  his  power.  And  the  king  wrote  in  reply  :  "  As  to  those 
he  (the  adelantado)  has  killed,  he  has  done  well,  and  as  to  those  he 
has  saved,  they  shall  be  sent  to  the  galleys.'1  3 

The  heretics  all,  or  nearly  all,  dead  or  held  as  prisoners,  Menendez 

*  See  original  documents  reprinted  in  French's  Hist.  Coll.  of  La.,  New  Series,  2  vols.,  and 
Charlevoix's  History,  Shea's  edition,  for  a  comparison  of  all  the  accounts  of  these  incidents. 

2  History  and  Antiquities  of  St.  Augustine,  Florida.     By  George  H.  Fairbanks,  New  York, 
1858. 

3  MS.  Letter  of  Menendez.     Parkman's  Pioneers. 


1565.] 


FOUNDING   OF   ST.   AUGUSTINE. 


213 


then  had  leisure  to  look  after  the  other  interests  of  his  colony,  at  the 
mouth  of  the  River  of  Dolphins.  He  had  landed  at  this  st  Augus. 
spot  on  the  8th  of  September,  after  his  unsuccessful  chase  tinebuilt- 
of  the  French  ships  from  the  River  of  May.  It  was  here  that  Ribault 
had  followed  to  attack  him,  when  his  fleet  was  scattered  by  the  tem 
pest,  and  finally  shipwrecked.  Menendez  had  gone  011  shore  and  taken 
formal  possession  of  the  country  in  the  name  of  the  King  of  Spain, 
with  military  pomp  and  religious  solemnity  ;  a  priest  meeting  him  at 
the  water's  edge,  chanting  a  Te  Deum,  and  bearing  a  crucifi^,  which 
the  soldiers  knelt  before  and  kissed  with  devout  thankfulness.  The 
Indians  watched  these  mysterious  proceedings  with  simple  wonder ; 
but  they  received  the  strangers  with  great  kindness,  and  gave  them 


Laying  out  of   St.   Augustine. 

the  house  of  a  chief,  called  Selooe,  for  immediate  shelter.  This  was 
made  the  nucleus  of  a  fort ;  a  ditch  was  at  once  dug  around  it,  and  a 
rampart  of  earth  and  fascines  raised.  It  was  the  first  permanent 
-European  settlement  within  the  present  boundaries  of  the  United 
States,  and  called  by  Menendez.  St.  Augustine,  because  on  the  festival 
day  of  that  saint  —  the  28th  of  August  —  the  Spanish  fleet  had  come 
in  sight  of  the  coast  of  Florida,  and  run  into  the  mouth  of  this  river. 


214  FRENCH   AND    SPANISH  IN   FLORIDA.  [CHAP.  IX. 

From  this  point,  a  few  days  later,  he  had  marched  upon  Fort  Caro 
line,  and  then  to  the  massacres  at  Matanzas  Inlet ;  and  here  he  had 
returned  with  a  sense  of  security  thus  frightfully  purchased,  to  found 
a  state. 

Not  a  month  had  elapsed  since  the  fleet  of  Ribault  sailed  into  the 
River  of  May,  with  streaming  banners,  amid  the  firing  of  guns,  great 

and  small,  the  hearty  cheers  for  a  voyage  happily  finished, 
Si^FTench  the  shouts  of  joy  at  an  unexpected  deliverance  from  danger 

and  distress.  Of  the  ships,  two  only  were  now  afloat  — 
those  carrying  Laudonniere  and  his  companions  on  their  painful  and 
perilous  voyage  back  to  France  —  of  the  people,  the  few  others  who 
were  alive  were  fugitives  in  the  woods  of  Florida,  or  prisoners  in  the 
hands  of  a  relentless  bigot,  whose  mercy,  when  he  showed  any,  was 
only  some  method  of  cruelty  just  short  of  death.  Eight  hundred 
Frenchmen  l  had  perished,  most  of  them  stabbed  to  death  while  their 
hands  were  in  bonds,  behind  their  backs. 

But  there  was  yet  to  come  another  act  in  the  bloody  baptism  of  the 
first  permanent  colony  planted  in  the  New  World,  north  of  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico.  The  news  of  the  atrocities  committed  by  Menendez  was 
long  in  reaching  Europe,  and  any  intelligence  of  the  details  was  de 
layed  till  they  were  gathered  chiefly  from  the  relations  sent  home  by 
the  Spaniards  themselves,  pieced  out  from  the  fragmentary  stories 

of  the  few  fortunate  Frenchmen  who  escaped.  The  horror 
in i'nmce°at  anc^  indignation  which  these  tales  excited  were  not  confined 
crueS.ish  to  the  friends  and  families  of  those  who  had  fallen  victims 

to  treachery  and  cruelty,  or  to  those  who  shared  their  sor 
row  from  religious  sympathy.  But  the  Catholic  King  of  France,  and 
his  infamous  mother,  took  no  steps  to  assert  the  honor  of  the  crown 
and  the  rights  of  the  people,  either  by  punishing  the  perpetrators  of 
so  horrible  an  atrocity,  or  by  calling  upon  Spain  to  bring  them  to  jus 
tice.  The  declaration  of  Menendez  that  he  executed  his  prisoners  at 
Fort  Caroline  not  as  Frenchmen,  but  as  Lutherans,  was  clearly  held  to 
be,  if  not  a  justification,  at  least  so  far  a  palliation  of  his  crime,  that  it 
called  for  no  redress  from  a  Catholic  monarch.  If  vengeance  or  honor 
demanded  retaliation  it  was  left  to  whomsoever  might  take  it  upon 
himself  to  inflict  it. 

Nearly  three  years  passed  away,  and  the  Spaniards  of  Florida  had 

probably  dismissed  all  fear  of  any  retribution  for  the  treach- 
cie  Gourgues   ery  and  cruelty  of  their  leader.     In  the  spring  of  1568  three 
theeRivernof  small  vessels  appeared  off  the  mouth  of  the  River  of   May, 
—  its   name   changed,   as   we   have   said,   to   San   Mateo,  — 
and  the  garrisons  of  two  forts  built  there  after  the   capture   of  Fort 
1  Charlevoix's  New  France,  vol.  ii.,  p.  211. 


1567.]  DOMINIQUE   DE   GOURGES.  215 

Caroline  saluted  the  strangers  as  they  passed,  supposing  them  to  be 
Spanish.  The  salute  was  returned  gun  for  gun,  but  the  ships  were 
French  not  Spanish,  and  under  the  command  of  Dominique  de  Gour- 
gues,  a  soldier  of  the  highest  reputation. 

De  Gourgues,  returning  from  foreign  service,  had  heard  of  the 
massacre  of  his  countrymen  in  Florida,  and  that  the  deed  had  gone  un 
punished  for  two  years.  It  is  not  certain  whether  he  was  a  Catholic 
or  a  heretic ;  but  he  was,  at  any  rate,  a  Frenchman,  and  the  soldier 
blazed  into  rage  and  shame  that  Frenchmen  should  have  been  so  be 
trayed  to  death,  and  that  no  hand  had  been  lifted  to  smite  their 
murderers.  With  his  passion  mingled,  doubtless,  something  of  per 
sonal  resentment,  for  he  had  himself  once  been  made  a  prisoner  by  the 
Spaniards  and,  contrary  to  the  rules  of  honorable  warfare,  condemned 
to  the  galleys.  However,  without  making  his  purpose  public,  he  now 
sold  his  estates,  and  borrowed  money  from  his  friends  to  fit  out  an  ex 
pedition,  ostensibly  for  the  coast  of  Africa. 

Sailing  in  August,  1567,  he  went  to  that  coast,  and  thence  to  the 
West  Indies.  His  cruise  had  lasted  all  winter,  and  perhaps  its  ex 
penses  were  defrayed  by  a  trade  in  negroes,  seized  in  fights,  which  he 
is  known  to  have  had  with  some  African  princes  near  Cape  Blanco. 
The  spring  found  him  in  harbor  at  the  western  extremity  of  Cuba, 
when,  for  the  first  time,  he  disclosed  to  his  men  the  real  ob- 

.  T    .  /-I    i-i"  i  11  T     Object  of  De 

ject  of  his  expedition.  Calling  them  together  he  repeated  Gourdes' 
the  story  of  the  slaughter  at  the  "  bloody  river  of  Matan- 
zas  ; "  he  asked  them  to  follow  him,  avenge  this  monstrous  cruelty, 
and  wipe  off  the  stain  upon  the  honor  of  France.  Open  ears  and 
quick  sympathies  received  his  speech  ;  it  was  even  easier  to  arouse 
the  indignation  than  to  restrain  the  impetuosity  of  his  men,  and 
they  were  hardly  willing  to  wait  for  favorable  weather  to  put  to 
sea.  Wherever  he  would  lead  they  would  follow,  and  every  man 
of  them  felt  that  the  honor  of  his  country  was  in  his  special  keep 
ing,  and  vengeance  for  the  murder  of  his  countrymen  his  sacred 
duty. 

De  Gourgues  stood  out  to  sea,  after  passing  the  forts  at  the  mouth 
of  the  May,  that  he  might  the  better  conceal  his  destination  from  the 
Spaniards  :  returning  to  the  coast  again,  when  a  few  leagues  north 
ward,  he  entered  the  mouth  of  a  small  river,  probably  the  present  St. 
Ilia.1  The  Indians,  who  also  supposed  the  strangers  to  be  Spanish, 

1  The  Reprinse  de  la  F/oride,  and  Laudonniere's  narrative,  call  the  river  the  Tacatacourou, 
named  the  Seine  by  the  French,  now  the  St.  Ilia.  Fairbanks'  History  of  St.  Augustine  says 
it  was  the  Somme,  now  the  St.  Mary's,  that  De  Gourgues  entered ;  Parkman  (Pioneers),  con 
jectures  that  it  may  have  been  either  the  St.  Ilia  or  St.  Mary's.  As  the  earliest  narratives 
distinctly  state  that  the  river  entered  was  the  Seine  —  the  Tacatacourou;  and  as  Laudon- 
niere  says  that  the  place  of  rendezvous  afterward  was  beyond  the  Somme  — the  St.  Mary's 
—  there  seems  to  be  no  good  reason  for  not  accepting  those  narratives. 


216  FRENCH  AND   SPANISH  IN   FLORIDA.  [CHAP.  IX. 

crowded  to  the  shore  prepared  to  oppose  their  landing,  for  Menendez 
Reception  of  an(^  n^s  companions  had  made  themselves  so  thoroughly 
byetheench  hateful  to  the  natives  that  they  were  determined  to  hinder 
natives.  any  more  of  a  race  they  feared  and  detested  from  entering 
the  country.  But  when  they  discovered  that  the  new-comers  were 
their  old  friends,  the  French,  they  received  them  with  every  possible 
sign  of  satisfaction  and  welcome,  followed  by  the  wildest  delight  when 
they  learned  that  the  expedition  was  a  hostile  one  against  the  Spanish 
settlements. 

Satouriona,  who  had  been  the  friend  of  the  French,  after  the  Indian 
fashion,  when  they  were  at  Port  Royal  and  on  the  May,  was 

French  al- 

nance  with     the  chief  who  received  De  Gourgues.     Between  them  an  alli- 

Indians.  _.  •    i        i  1-1  TT 

ance  was  entered  into  with  the  most  binding  Indian  solemni 
ties,  a  son  of  the  chief  and  his  wife  being  given  as  hostages  for  the 
safety  of  a  reconnoitring  party  sent  to  examine  the  position  of  the  forts 
on  the  May.  Satouriona  called  in  all  the  warriors  from  the  country 
round  about.  A  rendezvous  was  appointed  further  down  the  coast,  to 
which  the  Indians  went  by  land,  the  French  by  water.  Thence  they 
pushed  forward,  wading  through  marshes  and  streams,  their  feet  torn 
and  bleeding  with  the  stones  and  sharp  shells  that  lie  in  their  beds, 
forcing  their  way  through  the  tangled  forests,  at  their  head  marching 
De  Gourgues  and  Olotocara,1  a  nephew  of  Satouriona. 

At  dawn  they  were  in  front  of  the  Spanish  fort  on  the  north  bank 
of  the  May,  and,  as  at  Fort  Caroline  when  Menendez  sur- 
the  Spanish  prised  it  at  the  same  hour  of  the  day,  a  single  sentinel  only 
was  at  his  post  to  give  the  alarm.  Shouting  that  the  French 
were  upon  them,  he  coolly  plied  a  gun  he  brought  to  bear  upon  the 
advancing  enemy,  till  Olotocara,  springing  upon  the  platform,  ran  him 
through  with  a  pike.  The  affrighted  garrison  rushed  from  their 
quarters  in  a  vain  attempt  to  escape,  while  French  and  Indians,  in 
hot  fury  and  savage  hate,  poured  over  the  defences.  In  a  few  mo 
ments,  of  the  Spaniards  fifteen  only,  who  were  seized  and  bound,  were 
left  alive. 

The  attack  was  as  sudden,  the  onslaught  as  furious  and  as  irresisti 
ble,  the  destruction  more  complete  than  when  Menendez,  nearly  three 
years  before,  had  fallen  in  the  light  of  the  early  morning,  amid  the 
roar  of  the  storm,  the  cries  of  men,  and  the  shrieks  of  women  and  chil 
dren,  upon  the  feeble  garrison  of  Fort  Caroline.  But  the  work  was  as 
yet  but  just  begun,  and  the  completeness  af  French  vengeance  was  to 
be  made  still  more  significant. 

The  soldiers  of  the  fort  on  the  south  bank  of  the  river  were  at  no 

1  The  name  is  spelled  Olotocara,  Olotacara,  Olatocara,  Olocotora,  and  Olotoraca,  by  dif 
ferent  authors. 


1568.] 


ATTACK   ON   THE   SPANISH  FORT. 


217 


loss  to  understand  what  was  befalling  their  comrades  on  the  other 
side.  The  woods  were  alive  with  Indians  ;  the  air  was  filled  with 
their  frightful  yells  of  anger  and  defiance ;  to  the  Spaniards  it  was 
clear  from  their  boldness  that  something  more  than  usual  had  given 


Death   of  the    Sentinel. 

them  confidence  and  courage,  and  certainly  it  could  be  no  savage  hand 
that  trained  the  guns  of  the  captured  fort  so  promptly  and  truly  as  to 
silence  those  that  had  been  brought  to  bear  upon  the  attacking  party. 
The  murderers  of  Ribault  and  his  men  did  not  need  to  be  told  that 
the  white  men  they  saw  among  the  Indians  must  be  French. 

As  speedily  as  possible  De  Gourgues  embarked  his  men  upon  a  ves 
sel  he  had  taken  the  precaution  to  have  near  at  hand,  to  cross  the  river, 


218  FRENCH   AND   SPANISH  IN   FLORIDA.  [CHAP.  IX. 

and  the  Indians,  too  impatient  to  await  its  return  for  them,  plunged 
into  the  stream  and  swam  over.  The  Spaniards,  appalled 
the  span-  and  bewildered  by  the  impetuosity  of  an  onslaught  trans 
ferred  to  their  side  of  the  river,  which  had  evidently  swept 
everything  before  it  on  the  other,  made  only  a  feeble  attempt  to 
defend  their  works,  and  fled  for  their  lives.  The  avenging  French 
were  behind  them  as  they  abandoned  their  fortifications  ;  in  the  forest 
the  Indians  met  and  fell  upon  them  as  they  sought,  like  hunted  beasts, 
concealment  beneath  the  deep  shadows  and  in  the  tangled  under 
brush  of  the  woods.  In  this,  as  in  the  other  fort,  there  were  sixty 
men  ;  in  this,  as  in  the  other,  fifteen  were  seized  to  be  held  a  little 
while  as  captives  ;  in  this,  as  in  the  other,  all  the  rest  were  killed. 

San  Mateo,  with  a  force  of  nearly  three  hundred  men,  was  yet  to 
be  taken.  The  alarm  at  that  post  was  intense,  for  it  was  only  known 
that  both  the  forts  below  were  overcome  in  a  few  hours  and  not  a  man 
escaped.  The  commander  sent  out  a  soldier,  disguised  as  an  Indian, 
to  learn  the  strength  and  designs  of  the  invaders  ;  but  the  quick  eyes 
Fort  Mateo  °^  Olotocara  detected  the  cheat ;  the  spy  was  secured,  and 
besiegea.  ^he  garrison  remained  in  the  belief  that  San  Mateo  was 
about  to  be  surrounded  by  two  thousand  Frenchmen.  De  Gourgues 
rested  two  days,  and  then  appeared  in  the  woods  behind  the  fort.  The 
enemy  opened  fire,  which  only  sent  the  Frenchmen  to  the  protection  of 
the  trees.  Not  knowing  that  De  Gourgues'  force  was  little  more  than 
a  hundred  men,  the  Spaniards  probably  supposed  this  to  be  only  a 
detachment  sent  in  advance,  and  a  sortie  was  made  to  meet  and  dis 
perse  it.  But  the  Spanish  soldiers  ventured  too  far  ;  De  Gourgues 
threw  a  body  of  men  between  them  and  the  fort ;  a  deadly  fire,  close 
at  hand,  met  them  in  the  face  ;  in  front,  in  flank,  in  the  rear,  the 
Frenchmen  fell  upon  them  sword  in  hand ;  not  one  was  spared. 

From  within  the  palisades  the  Spaniards  watched  for  the  success 
and  saw  the  slaughter  of  their  comrades.  They  thought  no  longer  of 
defence,  but  only  of  escape.  Rushing  in  a  mob  to  the  op- 
strick'en  posite  side  of  the  fort,  they  threw  themselves  into  the  woods 
and  fled,  mad  with  fear,  for  their  lives.  They  were  met 
with  the  exultant  war-whoop  of  hundreds  of  savage  warriors  eager 
for  revenge,  who  sprang  upon  them  from  their  ambushes,  pierced  them 
with  deadly  arrows,  brought  them  down  with  crushing  blows  from 
tomahawks,  tearing  the  bloody  scalps  from  heads  whose  brains  had  not 
ceased  to  throb.  Some  few,  perhaps,  were  fortunate  enough,  or  brave 
enough,  to  fight  their  way  through  this  storm  of  merciless  slaughter  ; 
some  turned  and  fled  back  again,  hoping  for  quarter  from  Christian 
enemies.  But  few,  if  any,  escaped  from  sudden  death. 

But   the  massacre   of  Fort  Caroline  was  not  even  yet  atoned  for. 


1568.]  THE  MASSACRE   REVENGED.  219 

The  flag  of  France  once  more  floated  over  its  ramparts  of  earth  ;  the 
bodies  of  nearly  four  hundred  Spaniards  lay  unburied  on  the 
shores  of  the  River  of  May  ;  but  there  were  prisoners  still  Cation. 
alive.  De  Gourgues  ordered  them  to  be  brought  before  him,  in  the 
presence  of  his  own  men  and  his  Indian  allies.  He  was  there,  he 
told  them,  to  avenge  acts  which  were  as  heinous  an  insult  to  France 
as  they  were  atrocious  crimes  against  humanity;  although  such  deeds 
could  not  be  punished  as  they  deserved,  the  perpetrators  should,  at 
least,  be  made  to  suffer  all  the  retaliation  that  could  be  inflicted  by  an 
honorable  enemy.  Near  by  were  still  standing  the  trees  on  which 
Menendez  had  hanged  his  prisoners,  beneath  the  inscription :  "  I  do 
this  not  as  to  Frenchmen,  but  as  to  Lutherans."  To  the  same  trees 
the  French  captain  ordered  the  Spaniards  to  be  led  for  execution,  and 
over  their  heads  were  the  words  —  burned  into  a  plank  with  a  hot 
iron,  —  "  I  do  not  this  as  unto  Spaniards,  nor  as  unto  Maranes; 1  but 
as  unto  traitors,  robbers,  and  murderers." 

The  whole  force  which  De  Gourgues  commanded,  including  soldiers 
and  sailors,  was  less  than  three  hundred  men.  It  was  not  sufficient  to 
justify  him  in  an  attack  upon  St.  Augustine,  or  even  to  await  a  pur 
suit  in  formidable  numbers  from  that  point,  which  would  be  sure  to 
follow  if  he  remained  upon  the  coast.  He  had  done  all  he  could  do 
to  satisfy  the  wounded  honor  of  his  country,  to  avenge  the  perfidy 
and  cruelty  which  betrayed  so  many  of  his  countrymen  to  death.  But 
to  give  completeness  to  his  work  he  demolished  the  three  forts  whose 
garrisons  he  had  exterminated  ;  this  done,  he  took  leave  of  his  Indian 
allies  with  mutual  protestations  of  good- will,  with  inter-  De  artureof 
change  of  presents,  with  regrets  on  one  side  at  the  departure  ^,m°rir^es 
of  such  cherished  friends,  on  the  other  with  assurance  of  a  ida- 
spee'dy  return.  "  I  am  willing  now  to  live  longer,"  said  an  aged 
squaw,  in  the  spirit  of  heathen  philosophy,  "  for  I  have  seen  the 
French  return  and  the  Spaniards  killed."  And  that,  110  doubt,  was 
the  feeling  of  all  her  people.  There  was  some  good-will  toward  the 
French,  of  whom  they  had  little  fear.  But  the  Spaniards  they  both 
feared  and  hated. 

The  intelligence  of  what  De  Gourgues  had  done  reached  Spain  in 
time'  for  the  king  to  send  a  fleet  of  small  vessels  to  intercept  him  on 
the  coast.  It  was  not  far  behind  him  in  pursuit  at  Rochelle,  where  he 
first  arrived,  and  followed  him  to  other  ports,  but  he  fortunately 
evaded  capture.  The  French  king  would  not  have  regretted  it  had 
the  Spaniards  overtaken  him  ;  for  much  as  his  deeds  in  Florida  were 
generally  applauded,  and  especially  by  the  Huguenots,  he  was  looked 

1  Marane  was  an  opprobrious  term  applied  to  Spaniards,  meaning  originally,  suggests 
Parkman  (Pioneers  of  New  France),  9  Moor. 


220  FRENCH   AND   SPANISH  IN   FLORIDA.  [CHAP.  IX. 

upon  coldly  at  the  Catholic  court ;  and  he  found  it  prudent,  when  the 
king  of  Spain  offered  a  reward  for  his  head,  to  go  into  retirement,  if 
not  into  actual  concealment.  For  several  years  he  lived  in  obscurity, 
and  died  when  about  to  take  up  arms  once  more  against  his  old 
Deaths  of  enemies,  as  commander  of  the  Portuguese  fleet  in  the  service 
rnedGMen?ues  of  Don  Alphonso,  then  at  war  with  Philip  II.  of  Spain, 
endez.  Menendez  had  died  five  years  before  (in  1574)  when  about 
to  sail  as  admiral  of  the  Spanish  armada  against  Elizabeth  of  Eng 
land. 

The  extirpation  of  error  in  the  slaughter  of  heretics  by  Menendez 
had  been  fearfully  avenged  ;  in  the  propagation  of  the  faith  the  bloody 
apostle  was  even  less  successful.  He  was,  to  do  him  justice,  as  zealous 
in  the  one  cause  as  in  the  other,  but  the  Indians  steadily  refused  to 
listen  to  the  teachings  of  the  priests  who,  alone  of  all  the  Spaniards, 
were  not  more  merciless  and  cruel  than  the  savages  themselves.  And 
they  learned  moreover,  from  the  success  of  De  Gourgues'  expedition, 
that  Spaniards  were  not  invincible,  and  they  were  not  slow  to  profit 
by  that  lesson  whenever  the  opportunity  offered. 

But  Menendez  did  not  confine  his  efforts,  either  for  colonization  or 
the  conversion  of  the  Indians,  to  the  region  about  St.  Augus- 
fortsof  Men-  tine.  By  the  way  of  the  Bay  of  St.  Mary,  as  Gomez  and 
other  early  navigators  called  Chesapeake  Bay,  Menendez  be 
lieved  that  the  passage  to  India  would  be  found,  and  in  1566  he  sent 
a  vessel  carrying  soldiers  and  priests  to  establish  a  post  somewhere 
on  the  shores  of  the  Bay  or  one  of  its  tributary  rivers.  The  party  was 
guided  by  an  Indian  convert,  a  brother  of  the  cacique  of  the  Axacan 
or  lacan  country,  as  a  portion  of  Virginia  was  called,  whence  he  had 
been  taken  some  years  before  to  Mexico,  and  christened  by  the  name 
of  the  viceroy,  Don  Luis  de  Velasco.  This  expedition  was  unsuccess 
ful.  But  Menendez  continued  to  urge  his  project,  and  four  years  later 
induced  the  general  of  the  order  of  Jesuits  to  direct  the  establishment 
of  a  missionary  station  at  Axacan. 

The  Indian  convert,  Don  Luis,  was  then  in  Spain,  and  gladly 
availed  himself  of  such  an  opportunity  to  return  to  his  own  country, 
promising  to  use  his  influence  with  his  brother  and  his  people  on  be 
half  of  the  missionaries.  With  him  went  a  priest  and  two  religious 
from  Spain,  and  at  Port  Royal  they  were  joined  by  the  father  John 
Baptist  Segura,  the  head  of  the  Jesuit  Mission  of  Florida,  another 
priest,  and  four  Indian  boys,  novices  from  the  mission  school  at 
Havana. 

In  September,  1570,  this  little  party  of  devout  and  courageous  mis 
sionaries  were  landed  on  the  banks  of  the  Potomac,  —  which  the  early 
Spanish  navigators  called  the  Espiritu  Santo,  where  the  vessel  left 


1570.]  THE   SPANISH  MISSIONARIES.  221 

them,  with  a  few  stores,  alone  in  the  wilderness.    Travelling  six  miles 
on  foot  across  the  country  to  the  Rappahannock,  they  pushed 

•     ,        .it         •     j.       •          £  v    j_  '  j_i  ,        r     jt      i     Missionaries 

into  the  interior  tor  some  distance  along  the  coast  01  that  on  the  Rap- 
river,  till  they  reached  an  Indian  village.     Here  they  put  up 
a  rude  log  cabin  for  their  own  shelter  and  as  a  chapel,  which  they 
named  "La  Madre  de  Dios  de  lacan  "  —  "  the  chapel  of  the  mother 
of  God  at  lacan, "or  Axacan. 

Their  provisions  were  scanty,  and  they  were  soon  called  upon  to 
endure  the  hardships  of  winter.  The  Indians  were  even  poorer  than 
usual,  for  there  had  been  a  long  period  of  scarcity,  and  they  could 
give  at  best  but  little  aid  to  the  strangers,  though  they  received  them 
witli  kindness.  The  helpless  missionaries  could  neither  hunt  nor  fish, 
and  were  almost  entirely  dependent  upon  the  good-will  and  good 
offices  of  Don  Luis,  through  whom  alone  could  they  hold  much  intelli 
gent  communication  with  the  people  of  his  tribe.  But  Don  Luis  soon 
forgot  that  he  was  a  Christian  ;  the  instinct  of  Indian  blood 

'  c  •  Desertion  of 

and  the  force  of  early  habits  were  stronger  than  the  rite  ot  their  Indian 
baptism  and  the  pious  promises  of  the  neophyte ;  he  soon 
abandoned  the  brethren  and  resumed  the  companionship  of  his  youth 
and  the  free  and  savage  life  of  the  woods.  In  ceasing  to  be  the  friend 
of  the  Christians  he  became  their  most  dangerous  enemy,  constrained 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  to  prove  thus  the  sincerity  of  his  conduct  to 
those  whom  he  had  once  abandoned  for  civilized  life  and  the  religion 
of  the  white  man. 

Again  and  again  messengers  were  sent  to  the  renegade  to  recall 
him  to  the  duties  he  had  so  solemnly  assumed,  but  they  were  answered 
only  with  frivolous  excuses.  Late  in  January  father  Quiros,  taking 
with  him  two  of  the  Indian  boys  belonging  to  the  mission,  went  to  try 
the  effect  of  personal  and  spiritual  authority  with  the  man  upon  whose 
friendship  now  even  their  lives  depended.  But  his  expostulations  and 
entreaties  were  met  with  evasions  by  Don  Luis,  who  was  unable,  nev 
ertheless,  while  standing  face  to  face  with  the  good  father  and  listen 
ing  to  the  solemn  and  tender  admonitions  of  the  priest,  to  avow  the 
full  extent  of  his  own  hypocrisy  and  treachery.  But  no  sooner  had 
Quiros  and  his  two  companions  turned  disappointed  and  sorrowful 
to  retrace  their  foot-steps  than  they  were  brought  to  the  ground  by  a 
volley  of  arrows  from  the  lurking  savages. 

The  father  Segura  and  his  little  company  spent  the  time  meanwhile 
in  prayer  in  the  chapel  as  day  after  day  passed  and  there  Magsacre  Of 
were  no  tidings  of  Quiros.  On  the  fourth  day  the  war-  thePriests- 
whoop  rung  through  the  woods ;  a  band  of  painted  savages  surrounded 
the  chapel,  Don  Luis  at  their  head  dressed  in  the  cassock  of  the  mur 
dered  priest.  Segura  and  his  companions  were  no  longer  in  doubt  as 


222  FRENCH   AND   SPANISH   IN   FLORIDA.  [CHAP.  IX. 

to  the  fate  of  Quiros  ;  they  guessed,  no  doubt,  what  was  speedily  to  be 
their  own.  Don  Luis  demanded  their  knives  and  hatchets,  which  were 
meekly  surrendered.  At  a  signal  from  the  apostate  the  savages  rushed 
upon  the  defenceless  missionaries,  and  all  except  one  of  the  Indian 
boys,  saved  by  a  brother  of  Don  Luis,  were  instantly  slaughtered. 

In  the  spring  a  vessel  arrived  from  Port  Royal  with  supplies.  A 
crowd  of  Indians  thronged  the  banks  of  the  river  as  it  approached  ; 
at  a  distance  men  were  visible,  clothed  in  the  garments  of  the  dead 
priests.  The  savages  shouted,  —  "  See  the  fathers  who  came  to  us. 
We  have  treated  them  well  ;  come  and  see  them,  and  we  will  treat 
you  likewise."  The  sailors  were  not  deceived  by  this  shallow  artifice, 
and  returned  at  once  to  Port  Royal  to  report  the  evident  fate  of  the 
mission. 

Menendez,  in  the  course  of  the  year,  returned  from  Spain,  and 
resolved,  on  hearing  the  story,  to  punish  the  Indians  for  killing  his 
friends.  Taking  a  small  and  fast  vessel  he  sailed  up  the  Potomac, 
landed  a  small  force  and  marched  in  pursuit  of  Don  Luis  and  his 
brother  the  cacique.  He  failed  to  overtake  them,  but  others  were 
captured,  and  confessed  ;  the  boy,  Alphonsus,  was  brought  to  him, 
who  related  the  particulars  of  the  massacre,  pointing  out  eight  of 
those  among  the  prisoners  who  were  concerned  in  it.  These  the  ade- 
lantado  hanged  at  the  yard-arm  of  his  vessel,  first  having  them  bap 
tized,  more  perhaps,  to  the  satisfaction  of  his  own  conscience  than  to 
their  edification.  This  done  he  returned  to  St.  Augustine.  For 
more  than  thirty  years  longer  that  remained  the  sole  European  colony 
within  the  limits  of  the  present  United  States.  The  unknown  site 
somewhere  on  the  banks  of  the  Rappahannock,  of  the  chapel  of  Our 
Lady  of  Axacan,  marked  the  only  important  attempt  of  Spanish  colo 
nization  north  of  Florida.1 

In  1586,  Sir  Francis  Drake,  on  his  way  home  from  an  expedition  to 
South  America,  in  cruising  along  the  coast  of  Florida  in  search  of  the 
first  English  colony  on  the  island  of  Roanoke,  saw  an  outlook  on 
Anastasia  Island.  Entering  the  River  of  Dolphins  he  found  the  Span 
ish  settlement,  then  under  the  command  of  Pedro  Menendez,  a  nephew 
of  the  founder.  In  the  fort  was  a  treasure-chest,  containing  £ 2,000, 
sir  Francis  which  Drake  did  not  leave  behind  him;  the  town  was  a 
straAutfuks-s  cmster  of  wooden  houses,  and  these  he  burnt.2  As  he  ap- 
tine.  proached  the  fort,  from  which  the  Spaniards  had  fled,  "  forth 

with  came  a  Frenchman  being  a  Phipher  (who  had  bene  prisoner  with 

1  See  original  MS.  by  John  Gilmary  Shea,  in  New  York  Historical  Library;  and  "The 
Log  Chapel  on  the  Rappahaunock,"  by  the  same  author,  in  Catholic  World  for  March, 
1875. 

2  Barcia. 


1586.] 


CAPTURE    OF    ST.   AUGUSTINE. 


223 


them)  in  a  little  boate,  playing  on  his  Phiph  the  tune  of  the  Prince  of 
Orenge  his  song."1     Of  the  companions  of  Ribault  whom  Menendez 


The   French    Fifer. 


spared  from  the  second  massacre  at  Matanzas  Inlet,  because  he  had 
need  of  them,  one  was  a  fifer,  and  he  it  was,  probably,  who  gave  this 
shrill  welcome  to  the  English  invader. 

1  Sir  Francis  Drake's  West  Indian  Voyage  of  1585.     Hakluyt,  vol.  iii.,  1600. 


CHAPTER  X. 

ENGLISH  VOYAGES   AND   ATTEMPTS   AT   SETTLEMENT. 

FIRST  IMPULSE  IN  ENGLAND  TOWARD  AMERICAN  COLONIZATION.  —  UNSUCCESSFUL 
VOYAGES.  —  THEORIES  OF  A  NORTHEAST  PASSAGE.  —  VOYAGE  OF  SIR  HUGH  WIL- 
LOUGHBY  AND  Rl  CHARD  CHANCELLOR.  FROBISHERAND  1>AVIS  IN  THE  NORTHWEST. 

—  SIR  HUMPHREY  GILBERT'S  PLAN  FOR  AMERICAN  SETTLKMENTS.  —  His  DEPARTURE 
FROM  ENGLAND  AND  ARHIVAL  AT  NEWFOUNDLAND.  —  Loss  OF  SIR  HUMPHREY  ON 
HIS  RETURN.  —  WALTER  RALEIGH  SENDS  TWO  SHIPS  TO  EXPLORE  IN  AMERICA. — 
His  FIRST  COLONY  REACHES  THE  COAST  OF  NORTH  CAROLINA.  —  TOBACCO  INTRO 
DUCED  INTO  ENGLAND.  —  NEW  PLANTATION  BEGUN  UNDER  GOVERNOR  JOHN  WHITE. 

—  MYSTERIOUS  DISAPPEARANCE  OF  THE  SETTLERS.  —  UNSUCCESSFUL  SEARCH  FOR 
THE  LOST  COLONY.  —  RALEIGH'S  ATTEMPT  AT  COLONIZATION  ENDED  BY  IMPRISON 
MENT. 

IT  is  not  always  unprofitable,  and  it  is  often  interesting,  to  reflect 
what  might  have  been  the  course  of  human  events  but  for  the  inter 
vention  of  some  slight  action,  seeming  at  the  moment  to  be  of  trifling 
importance.  Had  Columbus,  for  example,  refused  to  deviate  on  his  first 
voyage  from  that  directly  westward  course  which  he  had  laid  down  as 
the  only  true  one,  his  first  land-fall  would  probably  have  been  the  coast 
of  Florida.  The  history  of  the  world  would  have  flowed  in  another 
channel,  and  the  progress  of  the  human  race  been  arrested  for  centuries 
if  the  order  had  not  been  given  on  board  the  Santa  Maria  to  put  the 
helm  up  and  stand  southwest  for  a  night,  in  pursuit  of  a  cloud-bank 
which  one  of  the  Pinzons  mistook  for  land.  We  may  venture  upon 
almost  any  latitude  of  conjecture  as  to  what  might  have  been,  had  the 
Spanish  march  of  conquest  and  possession  been  directed  to  the  terri 
tory  now  occupied  by  the  United  States  rather  than  to  that  of  the  rich 
and  semi-civilized  peoples  of  Mexico  and  Peru.  In  the  providence  of 
God  it  was  not  to  be. 

Besides,  the  disasters  and  disappointments  attending  all  the  expedi 
tions  of  the  Spanish,  the  Portuguese,  and  the  French  in  North  Amer 
ica,  in  the  course  of  the  sixteenth  century,  were  alleviated  and  atoned 
for  by  none  of  that  dazzling  acquisition  of  wealth  that  came  from  the 
spoiling  of  the  semi-civilized  nations  of  the  South.  The  North  Amer 
ican  Indians,  unlike  the  natives  of  softer  climates  whom  the  Spanish 
subdued  so  easily,  would  fight  to  the  death  with  the  fierceness  of 
wild  beasts  rather  than  quietly  submit  to  the  white  men,  or  if  re- 


1527.]  AWAKING    OF    ENGLISH  INTEREST.  225 

duced  to  slavery  would  die  in  obstinate  despair.  There  were  no  slaves 
and  no  gold  in  this  inhospitable  region  ;  people  and  country  were 
proved  to  be  alike  valueless  in  the  estimate  of  the  Spanish  conquerors, 
the  one  feeble  colony  at  St.  Augustine  alone  being  an  exception,  and 
that  owed  its  origin  to  a  cruel  fanaticism  and  was  held  together  by 
the  spirit  of  religious  propagandism.  It  was  happy  for  the  world  that 
it  was  so.  If  the  history  of  South  America  had  been  repeated  in  the 
north  it  would  have  been  better  that  the  Atlantic  had  still  been  held 
to  be  a  sea  of  darkness  into  which  no  ship  manned  by  mortals  could 
penetrate  and  live.  At  length  it  was  plain  that  not  the  Spanish  but 
a  people  of  another  blood,  another  faith,  and  another  destiny  were  to 
possess  the  land,  though  more  than  a  century  passed  from  the  time 
that  the  Cabots  looked  upon  their  terram  primtim  visam  of  the  New 
World  before  an  English  colony  was  planted  upon  its  shores. 

The  idea  of  the  real  value  the  new-found  regions  were  to  be  to 
the  English  people,  was  of  slow  growth  in  the  English  mind.  A 
short  way  to  India  was  the  main  purpose  of  the  voyages  of  the  Cabots. 
If  other  voyages  were  projected  or  made  under  commissions  from 
Henry  VII.  early  in  the  sixteenth  century,  as  was  probably  the  case, 
they  had  no  other  object.  Robert  Thorne,  an  eminent  merchant  of 
London,  whose  father  is  supposed  to  have  been  upon  avoy-  Awakingof 
age  to  Newfoundland,  urged  Henry  VIII.  in  1527,  to  send  Sfnin' 
out  fresh  expeditions  to  discover  new  lands  and  kingdoms  Amenca- 
whereby  the  king  would  win  perpetual  glory,  and  his  subjects  in 
finite  profit.  "  To  which  places,"  he  said,  "  there  is  left  one  way  to 
discover,  which  is  into  the  north,  for  that  of  the  foure  partes  of  the 
worlde,  it  seemeth  three  partes  are  discovered  by  other  princes.  For 
out  of  Spaine  they  have  discovered  all  the  Indies  and  Seas  Occidentall, 
and  out  of  Portingall  all  the  Indies  and  Seas  Orientall ;  so  that  by 
this  part  of  the  Orient  and  Occident  they  have  compassed  the  world. 
....  So  that  now  rest  to  be  discovered  the  sayd  northe  parts,  the 
which  it  seemeth  to  mee,  is  onely  your  charge  and  duety.  Because 
the  situation  of  this  your  Realme  is  thereunto  neerest  and  aptist  of  all 
others."  l  And  in  another  letter  on  the  same  subject  and  written 
with  the  same  purpose,  he  says :  "  It  appeareth  plainely  that  the  New 
foundland  that  we  discovered,  is  all  a  maine  land  with  the  Indies 
Occidentall,  from  whence  the  Emperor  hath  all  the  gold  and  pearles  : 

and  so  continueth  of  coast  more  than  5000  leagues  of  length 

So  that  to  the  Indies  it  would  seem  we  have  some  title Now 

then  if  from  the  sayd  New  found  lands  the  Sea  be  navigable,  there  is 
no  doubt  but  sayling  northward  and  passing  the  Pole,  descending  to 
the  Equinoctial  line,  we  shall  hit  these  Islands  [of  India,]  and  it  should 

1  Letter  of  Eobert  Thorne  to  Henry  VIII.,  Hakluyt,  vol.  i.,  p.  212. 


226  ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT   SETTLEMENT.          [CHAP.  X. 

be  a  much  shorter  way  than  either  the  Spaniards  or  Portingals 
have."  ! 

The  same  year  two  ships,  the  Mary  of  Cruilford  and  the  Samson, 
Early  voy-  sailed  from  London,  possibly  in  compliance  with  these  ex- 
Engianj1,  hortations  of  Thome's.2  At  any  rate  the  expedition  was 
undertaken  at  the  king's  command;  it  went,  wrote  John  Rut, 
the  captain  of  the  Mary  of  Gruilford,  as  far  north  as  the  fifty-second 
parallel ;  was  prevented  by  the  ice  from  venturing  further  ;  and  the 
ship  then  returned  to  England,  without  reporting  any  more  interesting 
fact  than  that  John  Rut  counted  "  eleven  saile  of  Normans,  and  one 
Brittaine,  and  two  Portugal!  Barkes,  and  all  a  fishing,"  in  the  harbor 
of  St.  John.3  The  Samson  parted  company  with  the  other  ship  be 
fore  she  reached  St.  John  and  was  probably  lost.  In  this  expedition 
Cardinal  Wolsey  seems  to  have  had  some  pecuniary  interest. 

In  1536  an  enterprise  equally  discouraging  and  certainly  tragic  was 
undertaken  by  one  Master  Hore,  of  London,  "  assisted  by 

Voyftsre  of 

Master iiore,  the  king's  favor  and  good  countenance,"  Hore  persuading 
many  gentlemen  of  Inns  of  Court  and  of  Chancery  and 
some  country  gentlemen  of  good  estate  to  go  with  him.  Altogether 
there  were  one  hundred  and  ten  persons  who  sailed  from  Gravesend 
in  April  of  that  year  in  the  ships  Trinitie  and  Minion,  the  former  of 
one  hundred  and  forty  tons  burden.  They  arrived  in  Newfoundland 
after  a  stormy  passage  of  two  months,  where  they  went  ashore  and  re 
mained  for  the  summer.  What  good  result  was  expected  from  such 
an  expedition  it  is  not  easy  to  understand,  for  it  was  so  ill  provided  that 
the  men  were  soon  in  a  starving  condition,  and  forced  to  seek  susten 
ance  in  such  wild  roots  as  they  could  gather.  And  to  such  extremity 
were  they  reduced  that  they  soon  murdered  each  other  secretly  and  fed 
upon  the  flesh  of  the  victims. 

The  captain,  who  had  supposed  that  the  loss  of  his  men  was  due 
to  wild  beasts  and  Indians,  had  no  other  remedy,  when  the  shocking 
truth  became  known  to  him,  than  to  make  a  "  notable  Oration,"  in 
which  he  set  forth  their  sin  in  the  strongest  terms  as  offensive  to  God, 
exhorting  them  to  repentance  and  prayer.  The  murders  probably 
ceased,  but  the  famine  continued,  and  it  was  not  long  before  hunger 
drove  them  to  cast  lots  for  the  choice  of  one  who  should  die  to  save 
the  rest.  But  such  was  the  mercy  of  God,  says  the  narrative,  that 
a  French  ship  well  provisioned  arrived  that  same  night.  Of  this  the 

1  Thome  to  the  English  Ambassador  in  Spain.  —  Haklnyt,  vol.  i. 

2  Bicldle  (Memoir  of  Cabot,  p.  279)  suggests  that  it  was  on  board  the  Mary  of  Guilford 
that  Verrazano  was  pilot  when  he  was  captured  and  eaten  by  the  savages.     Her  captain 
would  hardly  have  omitted  to  mention  such  an  incident  had  it  occurred  on  board  his  vessel. 

8  Purchas's  Pilgrims,  John  Rut's  letter  to  Henry  VIII.,  vol.  iii.,  p.  809.     Hakluyt  refers 
to  the  sailing  of  one  ship  in  1527,  and  calls  her  the  Dominus  Vobiscum,  vol.  iii.,  p.  129. 


1553.]  VOYAGE   OF   SIR   HUGH   WILLOUGHBY.  227 

Englishmen,  either  by  force  or  by  fraud,  possessed  themselves  and  put 
to  sea,  leaving  the  Frenchmen  their  empty  vessel,  and  to  starve  in  their 
stead.  The  Frenchmen,  afterward,  however,  found  their  way  to  Eng 
land,  and  were  recompensed  by  the  king  for  their  losses,  though  the 
pirates  who  had  overpowered  them  were  not  punished,  as  they  should 
have  been,  in  consideration  of  the  dire  distress  which  incited  them  to 
so  base  a  crime.1 

The  want  of  success  in  these  adventures  had  undoubtedly  a  dis 
couraging  influence.  The  belief,  handed  down  even  to  a  recent 
period  as  a  kind  of  national  heirloom,  that  British  courage  and  perse 
verance  would  find  somewhere  a  northwest  passage  to  India,  was,  if  not 
abandoned,  at  least  forgotten  for  nearly  forty  years  in  the  middle  period 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  In  place  of  it  a  conviction  gained  ground  that 
the  true  road  to  Cathay  was  by  the  northeast.  Sebastian  Cabot  was  at 
that  time  in  England,  and  he  had  "  long  had  this  secret  in  his  mind;" 
originating,  perhaps,  in  his  own  experience  of  half  a  century  before, 
and  his  familiar  knowledge,  gained  as  pilot-major  of  Spain  and  Eng 
land,  of  the  abortive  attempts  of  Spanish,  Portuguese,  French,  and 
English  to  go,  as  Thorne  said  in  his  letter  to  Henry  VIII.,  by  way  of 
the  north  into  the  back  side  of  the  New  found  land. 

There  was  at  this  period  great  depression  in  the  trade  of  England, 
and  the  growth  of  commercial  enterprise  was  seeking  untried  channels. 
The  merchants  of  London  were  looking  for  new  and  better  markets  for 
their  "  commodities  and  wares  "  than  could  be  found  near  home,  and 
they  sought  counsel  of  Cabot.    Trade  and  science  struck  hands  at  once. 
In  1553  Sebastian  Cabot  appears  as  first  governor  of  "  the  Sebastian 
mysterie  and    companie  of    the  merchants  adventurers  for  go^rn^of 
the  discovrie  of  Regions,  Dominions,  Islands,  and  places  un-   ofCm^any 
known,"  and  is  preparing  "  ordinances,  instructions  and  ad-  chants- 
vertisements   of    and  for  the  direction   of   the    intended  voyage  for 
Cathay." 

In  May  of  that  year  three  ships  sailed  from  London  under  the  com 
mand  of  Sir  Hugh  Willoughby  as  captain-general  of  the  fleet.  girHugh 
Evidently  great  things  were  expected.  ,  Willoughby  was  "  a  Wllloughby- 
most  valiant  gentleman  and  well  born,"  chosen  as  the  admiral  above 
all  others  because  he  was  "  of  goodly  personage  and  singular  skill  in 
the  service  of  warre;  "  Richard  Chancellor,  captain  of  one  of  the  ships 
and  pilot-major  of  the  fleet,  was  of  the  household  of  Henry  Sidney  — 
afterward  the  father  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney  —  who,  in  a  public  speech, 
assured  the  merchants,  not  only  of  the  value  of  his  friend,  but  that  hfe 
hoped  "  this  present  godly  and  virtuous  intention  would  prove  profita 
ble  to  this  nation  and  honourable  to  this  our  land ; "  an  intention 

1  Hakluyt,  vol.  iii..  p.  129. 


228 


ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS   AT   SETTLEMENT.          [CHAP.  X. 


which  the  nobility  were  ready  to  help  and  further.  Even  the  names 
of  the  ships  indicate  the  sanguine  hopes  of  the  expedition,  for  they 
were  called  the  Bona  Esperanza,  the  Edward  (for  the  king)  Bona- 
venture,  and  the  Bona  Confidentia.  They  were  well  built  and  well 
provided  ;  and  one  of  them,  says  Clement  Adams,1 "  was  made  stanch 
and  firme  by  an  excellent  invention :  "  they  covered  a  piece  of  the 
keel  of  the  ship  with  thin  sheets  of  lead  to  protect  it  from  the 
worms,  —  the  first  time  apparently  that  sheathing  was  used  in  Eng 
land. 

On  the  20th  of  May  the  fleet  dropped  down  to  Greenwich.     The 

court  was  at  that  place,  and  the  courtiers  came  running  out 
ure  of  \vii-     to   see  the  vessels  ;  the  privy  council  looked    out  from  the 

windows  and  from  the  tops  of  the  towers  ;  the  people  crowded 
down  to  the  shore  ;  upon  the  ships  the  sailors  clustered  like  bees  in 


Willoughby's  Ships  in  Arctic  Seas. 

the  tops,  upon  the  yards  and  shrouds,  and  while  hills  and  valleys  rever 
berated  with  salute  after  salute,  these  mariners  "  all  apparelled  in 
watchet  or  skie-coloured  cloth,"  .  .  .  .  "  shouted  in  such  sort  that 
the  skie  rang  againe  with  the  noyses  thereof."  It  was  a  gala-day  on 
the  Thames,  "  a  very  triumph  in  all  respects  to  the  beholders." 

In  the  north  seas  the  ships,  not  many  days  after,  parted  company 
in  a  storm.  Two  of  them  kept  together,  and  were  found  two  years 
later  by  some  Russian  fishermen  in  a  Lapland  harbor.  They  were 
the  Bona  Esperanza  and  the  Bona  Confidentia.  In  the  cabin  of  the 
Esperanza  sat  the  body  of  Sir  Hugh  Willoughby,  a  pen  between  his 

1  See  his  narrative  in  Hakluyt,  vol.  i.,  p.  243,  et  seq. 


1570.]  SIR  HUMPHREY  GILBERT'S  DISCOURSE.  229 

frozen  fingers,  his  journal  open  on  the  table  before  him.  Scattered 
about  both  ships  lay  the  bodies  of  the  frozen  crews  ;  every  man  on 
board  had  perished  with  the  cold.  When  afterward  an  attempt  was 
made  to  take  the  ships  back  to  England  with  their  frozen  companies, 
they  were  buried  as  they  had  died,  together,  for  both  the  vessels 
foundered  at  sea. 

In  all  the  tragedies  of  Arctic  explorations  none  is  more  pathetic  than 
this  ;  unlike   many   others,  however,  it   was  not  a   useless   sacrifice. 
Chancellor  in  the  other  ship  reached  Archangel,  and  travelled  thence 
overland  to  Moscow.     A  new  channel  of  trade  was  opened  ; 
such   civilization   as    Western    Europe   then  possessed   was  opened  be- 
brought  to  the  knowledge  and  observation  of  less  cultivated  i^md  and°g 
peoples ;  the  Muscovy  Company  became  powerful  and  rich, 
and  largely  added  to  that  commercial  prosperity  and  greatness  which 
were  to  be  the  pride  and  strength  of  England.     Satisfied  that  a  north 
east  passage  to  Cathay  was  doubtful  if  not  impossible,  the  English  were 
content  with  the  fruits  which  this  search  for  it  had  brought  them. 

A  few  years  later  the  old  idea  revived.  In  1570  an  ingenious  essay 
full  of  the  cosmographical  learning  of  the  time,  written  by  Sir  Hum 
phrey  Gilbert,  renewed  the  interest  if  not  the  belief  in  the  northwest 
passage.1  America,  he  thought,  was  the  Atlantis  of  Plato,  Aristotle, 
and  other  ancient  philosophers.  Partially  submerged  and  Humphrey 
divided  by  floods,  all  knowledge  of  it  was  lost  for  many  a^urse 
centuries  ;  but  since  it  had  been  recently  rediscovered,  mod-  no/thwest 
ern  geographers  had  come  to  the  conclusion  of  the  ancients,  Passase- 
that  it  was  an  island.  If  an  island  it  could  be  circumnavigated,  and 
it  would  be  possible  by  sailing  on  the  north  side  of  America  to  go  to 
"  Cataia,  China  and  East  India."  Not  only  was  it  theoretically  pos 
sible,  but  it  had  actually  been  done.  According  to  several  writers, 
there  had  been,  both  before  the  Christian  era,  and  also  in  the  eleventh 
century,  certain  Indians  cast  upon  the  shores  of  Germany.  They 
could  not,  argued  Gilbert,  have  come  by  the  southwest  through  the 
Strait  of  Magellan,  nor  by  the  southeast  around  the  Cape  of  Good 
"Hope,  because  of  the  distance  and  because  of  the  winds  and  cur 
rents  ;  nor  by  the  northeast,  even  if  there  were  any  passage  that  way, 
which  he  doubted,  because  of  the  shallowness  of  the  sea,  and  its 
being  therefore  perpetually  frozen.  Their  only  probable  route,  there 
fore,  was  by  the  northwest.  But  it  was  not  a  question  of  probabili 
ties.  One  of  the  old  writers  had  declared  that  three  brothers  had 
sailed  from  Europe  through  this  passage,  and  hence  it  was  called  Fre- 
tum  Trium  Fratrum  —  the  Strait  of  the  Three  Brothers.  He,  Sir 
Humphrey,  had  with  his  own  ears  heard  a  certain  Spaniard  assure  Sir 

1  "Discourse  written  by  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  Kuight,"  Hakluyt,  vol.  iii.,  p.  11. 


230 


ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS   AT    SETTLEMENT.          [CHAP.  X. 


Henry  Sidney  :  that  he  knew  a  friar,  a  man  famous  for  his  many 
voyages,  who  had  sailed  through  and  made  a  map  of  this  strait ;  that 
he  told  the  King  of  Portugal  of  it,  who  "  most  earnestly  desired  him 
not  in  anywise  to  disclose  or  make  the  passage  knowen  to  any  nation  : 
'  for  that  (said  the  king)  if  England  had  knowledge  and  experience 
thereof,  it  would  both  greatly  hinder  the  King  of  Spaine  and  me.'  " 

This  ingenious  essay  its  author 
showed  to  George  Gascoigne,  the 
poet,  Avho  was  first  interested  in 
it  as  a  literary  work.  But  it  had 
also  another  value,  and  for  that  he 


borrowed  it.  Martin  Fro- 
bisher,  or  Forboiser,  was  a 
kinsman  of  Gascoigne,  and 
was  then  proposing  if  not 
actually  preparing  for  a 

northwestern  expedition.     To  Frobisher's  Departure. 

him,  doubtless,  Gascoigne  showed   the  paper  ;  perhaps  it  was  by  his 

counsel  that  it  was  soon  after  published  ; 2  at  any  rate   it   can   hardly 

have  failed  to  influence  opinion,  and  so  have  forwarded  Fro- 

WsheTde-0     bisher's  purposes.     Two  months  later  —  in  June,  1576  —  he 

northwest      sailed  with  three  small  vessels,  one  of  them  a  pinnace  of  only 

'  ten  tons.     As  they  passed  Greenwich  on  their  way  down  the 

river,  the  queen,  Mary,  watched  them  from  the  windows,  and  conde- 

1  Sir  Henry  Sidney,  who  nearly  twenty  years  before  took  so  lively  an  interest  in  the 
discovery  of  the  northeast  passage,  and  made  a  speech  at  a  Merchants'  meeting  just  before 
the  sailing  of  Sir  Hugh  Willoughby. 

2  Memoir  of  Cabot,  p.  290.   Biddle  quotes  from  the  original  publication,  now  in  the  British 
Museum,  of   Gilbert's  essay  with  an   introduction  by  Gascoigne.     This   introduction  Hak- 
luyt  omits. 


1587.]  FROBISHER'S  VOYAGES.  231 

scended  to  wave  her  hands  in  token  of  farewell.  She  afterwards  sent 
messengers  on  board  to  express  her  "good  liking"  to  the  expedition — 
an  evidence  of  the  importance  attached  to  it. 

Frobisher  made  two  other  voyages  in  the  two  following  years.     On 
all  of  them  he  saw  the  land  of  Frisland  "  rising  like  pinna-  Frobisher:s 
cles  of  steeples,"  in  about  latitude  61°,  from  twelve  to  fif-  tMrdyo>nd 
teen  days  sail  west  from  the  Shetland  Islands.    All  along  its  ages- 
coast  were  high  mountains  covered  with   snow,  except   where   their 
sides  were  too  precipitous.     Nowhere  could  he  find  a  landing-place 
or  a  harbor,  nor  were  there  any  signs  of  habitation.     Either  this  was 
Greenland,  or  Frisland  has  since  disappeared,  for  no  navigator  since 
Frobisher  has  ever  seen  it. 

Thence  Frobisher  steered  westward,  pursuing  on  each  voyage 
nearly  the  same  course.  The  strait,  which  to  this  day  bears  his 
name,  he  thought  was  a  passage  to  the  sea  of  Suez,  and  the  island 
of  Cumberland  he  supposed  to  be  a  part  of  the  coast  of  Asia.  On 
the  first  voyage  he  picked  up  some  black  stones,  and  one  of  these, 
on  his  return,  was  given  as  a  curiosity  to  the  wife  of  one  of  the 
adventurers.  She  threw  it  into  the  fire,  and  after  long  exposure  to 
the  heat  without  being  consumed,  it  glistened  like  gold,  and  was  pro 
nounced  to  be  such  by  the  refiners.  A  new  impulse  and  a  new  pur 
pose  were  given  to  the  subsequent  expeditions,  and  on  the  last  Fro 
bisher  went  out  in  command  of  fifteen  ships.  They  were  to  come 
back  laden  with  ore,  and,  said  the  commander  of  the  fleet,  "  if  it  had 
not  beene  for  the  charge  and  care  we  had  of  the  fleete  and  freighted 
ships,  we  both  would  and  could  have  gone  through  to  the  South  Sea, 
called  Mar  del  Sur,  and  dissolved  the  long  doubt  of  the  passage  which 
we  seeke  to  finde  to  the  rich  countrey  of  Cataya."  l  But  the  hundreds 
of  tons  of  supposed  ore  which  they  brought  back  to  England  proved 
no  less  a  delusion  than  the  passage  to  the  East,  for  they  held  no 
gold. 

The  cost  of  these  shiploads  of  black  stones  was  forgotten  in  the 
course  of  the  next  four  or  five  years,  and  only  Frobisher's  assurance 
remembered — that,  but  for  the  care  of  those  useless  cargoes  he  would 
have  sailed  direct  to  Cathay.  Another  northern  expedition  remains 
to  be  noticed  before  we  turn  to  the  more  important  events  of  the  same 
period  under  the  guidance  of  statesmen  who  were  wise  enough  to 
see  that  the  power  and  opulence  of  England  were  to  be  increased 
by  founding  an  empire  in  the  New  World  rather  than  by  John  p^ 
seeking  a  passage  to  the  rich  kingdoms  of  other  peoples.  j."JionsArct" 
Three  times  in  the  course  of  the  years  1585-86  and  1587,  15%5- 
John  Davis  heroically  pushed  his  way  through  those  frozen  northern 

i  Hakluyt,  vol.  iii.,  p.  80. 


232 


ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT   SETTLEMENT.         [CHAP.  X. 


seas.  On  the  third  of  these  voyages,  in  1587,  he  left  his  two  small 
vessels  on  the  coast  of  Cumberland  Island  to  fish,  while  he  went  north 
ward  in  a  pinnace.  For  about  six  weeks  he  pushed  his  way  among  the 
icebergs  and  fields  of  ice,  sometimes  along  the  western  coast  of  Deso 
lation,  as  he  called  Greenland,  sometimes  on  the  opposite  coast,  and 
penetrating  Baffin's  Bay  as  far  as  the  seventy-third  parallel.  In  the 
Strait,  which  ever  since  has  borne  his  name,  he  saw  the  land  on  both 
sides  of  him  ;  but  beyond  was  "  a  great  sea,  free,  large,  very  salt  and 
blew,  and  of  an  unsearchable  depth."  Davis  was  persuaded  that 
nothing  but  ice  and  bad  weather  prevented  his  sailing  direct  to  India 
along  the  northern  coast  of  America  ;  but  these  did  stay  his  further 
progress  in  any  direction  and  he  returned  to  where  he  had  left  his 
ships.  These,  meanwhile,  satisfied  with  their  "  catch  "  of  cod,  had 
ruthlessly  abandoned  their  commander  and  gone  home  to  save  their 
fish.  The  pinnace,  however,  reached  England  in  safety.  The  death  of 
Secretary  Walsingham,  who  was  Da  vis's  chief  patron,  and  the  prepar 
ations  to  meet  the  Spanish  Armada,  prevented  any  further  prosecution 
of  his  discoveries. 

The  familiar  names  of  two  straits  upon  the  map  of  North  America 
keep  alive  the  memory  of  these  intrepid  navigators,  Frobisher 
an^  Davis.     The  voyages  of  both,  if  not  directly  due  to  the 
u  Discourse  "  of  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  which  George  Gas- 
coigne  published,  received  from  it,  doubtless,  an  important  impulse. 

But  Gilbert  himself  meanwhile 
had  wider  views  than  the  possi 
bility  of  navigation  around  the 
northern  coast  of  North  Amer 
ica,  though  no  strait  or  head 
land  upon  the  continent  bears 
the  name  of  the  first  English 
man  who  sought  it  with  the 
single  purpose  of  colonizing 
and  making  it  a  part  of  the 
British  Empire.  "  Many  voy 
ages,"  says  Captain  Edward 
Hayes,  "have  bene  pretended, 
yet  hitherto  never  any  thor 
oughly  accomplished  by  our 
nation  of  exact  discovery  into 
the  bowels  of  those  maine, 
sir  Humphrey  Gilbert.  ample  and  vast  countrevs,  ex 

tended  infinitely  into  the  north  from  30  degrees,  or  rather  from  25 
degrees,  of  septentrionall  latitude,  neither  hath  a  right  way  bene  taken 


sir  Humph- 


nization. 


1587.] 


SIR  HUMPHREY   GILBERT. 


233 


of  planting  a  Christian  habitation  and  regiment  upon  the  same."  l  It 
is  not,  indeed,  quite  true  that,  as  the  narrative  goes  on  to  say,  that 
"  worthy  gentleman  our  countryman.  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  Knight, 
was  the  first  of  our  nation  that  caried  people  to  erect  an  habitation 
and  government  in  those  northerly  countreys  of  America ;  "  for  Cabot 
had  taken  colonists  to  Baccalaos  eighty  years  before.  It  nevertheless 
is  true  that  in  the  active  brain  of  Gilbert  was  first  conceived  the  proj 
ect  which  was  the  germ  of  the  future  power  of  England  in  the  New 
World,  the  seed  whence  grew  the  present  United  States. 

Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert  was  one  of  three  brothers,  all  of  whom  were 
men  of  character  and  distinction,  and  all  engaged  in  schemes  of  Ameri- 


View  on   Coast  near  Torquay. 

can  colonization.     The  family  was  one  of  consideration  and  wealth  in 
the  County  of  Devon,  then  of  the  first  importance  in  the  country  for 
its  commerce  and  sea-ports.     The  family  seat  was  not  far  from  the 
port  of  Torquay,  looking  out  upon  the  English  channel.2     The  father 
was  Otho  Gilbert,  whose  name  is  remembered  because  he  was  the 
father  of  such  sons  and  the  husband  of  their  mother.     Humphrey,  the 
second  son,  was  educated  at  Eton  and  Oxford,  and  was  des-  Famjlyof 
tined  for  the  law.    But  Devon  influences  were  stronger  than  pj,rr"u™ii_ 
those  of  school  and  college.     Let  him  ride  where  he  would  bert- 
from  his  father's  castle,  within  a  circuit  of  not  many  miles,  he  would 

1  Hakluyt,  vol.  iii.,  p.  143,  et  seq. 

2  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  by  Edward  Edwards,  vol.  i.,  p.  76. 


234 


ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT    SETTLEMENT.          [CHAP.  X. 


come  upon  Torquay,  Dartmouth,  Brixham,  Teignmouth,  Exeter,  their 
ports  filled  with  vessels  of  all  kinds,  from  the  tall  ship  that  sailed 
southward  in  pursuit  of  Spanish  galleons,  to  the  little  craft  that  ven 
tured  into  northern  seas  to  load  with  cod  upon  the  coast  of  Bacca- 


laos.  About  the  quays  of  the 
busy  sea-ports  loitered  mari 
ners  and  soldiers,  come  home 
from  foreign  voyages  or  for- 

•,i         i     -i  e  Dartmouth   Harbor. 

eign    service,    with    tales    of 

travel  in  strange  lands  and  of  deeds  of  war  ;  and  to  a  young  man  of 
courage  and  imagination  these  would  have  an  irresistible  charm  in  an 
age  when  the  lure  to  ambition  was  romantic  adventure. 

On  the  maternal  as  well  as  paternal  side  Gilbert  was  of  good  blood, 
for  his  mother,  who  was  the  mother  also,  by  a  second  marriage,  of  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh,  was  of  a  family  distinguished  at  various  periods  of 
English  history, — the  Champernouns.  She  was,  says  John  Fox,  the 
raartyrologist,  "  a  woman  of  noble  wit  and  of  good  and  godly  opin 
ions."  Not  much  is  known  of  her,  but  it  is  enough  to  know  that  she 
was  the  mother  of  the  Gilberts  and  of  Raleigh,  —  a  woman  to  be  held 
in  reverential  remembrance  in  a  land  where  her  sons  were  the  first 
to  plant  the  seed  that  should  bear  good  fruit  in  the  New  World. 
Humphrey  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert  was  first  a  soldier,  serving  in  the 
Sceseassaser~  wars  of  France,  of  Ireland,  and  of  the  Netherlands.  That 
he  did  good  service  there  is  ample  testimony.  In  the  Neth 
erlands  he  led  a  regiment  for  the  Prince  of  Orange,  fighting  for  the 


1583.]  SIR   HUMPHREY   GILBERT'S   EXPEDITION.        .          235 

Huguenots  and  the  new  faith.  In  Ireland  he  was  made  Governor  of 
Munster.  "  For  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,"  wrote  Sir  Henry  Sidney, 
"  I  cannot  say  enough  ....  for  the  estimation  that  he  hath  won  to 
the  name  of  Englishman  there  [in  Ireland]  before  almost  not  known, 
exceedeth  all  the  rest."  "  I  never  hard,"  wrote  Sir  Walter  Raleigh, 
"  nor  rede  of  any  man  more  fered  than  he  is  among  the  Irishe  na- 
cion."  * 

In  1578  Gilbert  received  an  ample  charter  giving  him  power  for  the 
next  six  years  to  discover  "  such  remote  heathen  and  barbar-  Hig  charter) 
ous  lands,  not  actually  possessed  by  any  Christian  prince  or  1578- 
people,"  and  have  them  for  his  own  both  by  sea  and  land  as  absolute 
proprietor.  Though  that  portion  of  America  near  the  river  of  Canada 
was  the  best  known,  the  more  southern  region  was  —  Gilbert  and  those 
engaged  with  him  believed  —  the  more  valuable.  Florida,  it  was  said, 
was  by  divine  limitation  the  impassable  boundary  of  Spanish  domin 
ion  in  the  New  World,  and  "  that  the  countreys  lying  North  of  Florida 
God  hath  reserved  the  same  to  be  reduced  into  Christian  civility  by 
the  English  nation."  2 

Sir  Walter  Raleigh  was  chief  among  those  who  entered  into  this 
scheme  of  his  half-brother,  and  who  contributed  money,  influence,  and 
personal  effort  for  its  success.  When,  the  year  after  Gilbert  received 
the  charter,  he  made  the  first  attempt  to  avail  himself  of  the  privileges 
it  bestowed,  Raleigh,  it  is  said,"  sailed  with  him.  The  expedition,  how 
ever,  returned  within  a  few  days  crippled,  and  with  the  loss  of  one  ship 
probably  captured  in  a  fight  with  the  Spaniards  at  sea.  But  it  encoun 
tered  many  difficulties  even  before  starting.  Dissensions  had  arisen 
among  those  who  had  engaged  in  it,  followed  by  withdrawals  ;  thea 
Orders  of  Council  came,  first  that  Gilbert  should  only  put  to  sea  under 
sureties  of  good  behavior ;  then  that  he  should  abandon  the  enterpi'ise 
altogether  under  pain  of  the  queen's  displeasure.  For  the  watchful 
Spaniards,  jealous  of  every  English  vessel  that  turned  her  head  west 
ward,  complained  of  depredations  made  or  to  be  made  upon  Spanish 
commerce  —  complaints  likely  enough  to  be  well  founded,  for  he  was 
no  true  British  sailor  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  who  did  not  hate  the 
Spaniard  as  he  hated  the  enemy  of  mankind,  and  did  not  hold  him  to 
be  the  lawful  prey  of  all  Christian  men. 

But  in  1583  the  start  was  more  successful.  Raleigh's  influence 
with  Elizabeth  removed  all  obstacles  that  the  Lords  of  Council  could 
put  in  the  way,  if  they  were  still  disposed  to  listen  to  Spanish  com 
plaints,  or  the  Spaniards  to  offer  them.  The  queen  wished  Gil 
bert  "  as  great  goodhap  and  safety  to  his  ship  as  if  herself  were  there 

1  Edwards'  Life  of  Raleigh,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  2-12. 

2  Report  of  the  Voyages,  etc.,  of  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  by  Edward  Haies.    Hakluyt,  vol.  iii., 
p.  143. 


236  ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT  SETTLEMENT.          [CHAP.  X. 

in  person,"  and  desired  him  to  send  her  his  picture  as  a  keepsake. 
His  charter,  moreover,  expired  in  a  year,  and  he  could  afford  to  delay 
Gilbert  sails  no  longer.  He  sailed  in  June  in  command  of  five  ships,  the 
of  five  ships,  largest  of  which,  the  Raleigh,  was  fitted  out  by  Sir  Walter 
himself  at  an  expense  of  ,£2,000,  and  was  two  hundred  tons 
burden.  The  smallest,  the  Squirrel,  was  only  ten  tons  burden  ;  of  the 
other  three,  the  Golden  Hind  and  the  Swallow  measured  forty  tons 
each,  and  the  admiral's  ship,  the  Delight,  was  one  hundred  and  twenty 
tons.  The  Raleigh  deserted  them  in  a  few  days  and  returned  to  port, 
pestilence  having  broken  out,  it  was  said,  among  her  crew ;  but  some 
thing  else  was  the  matter,  for,  says  Captain  Edward  Hayes,  the  owner 
and  captain  of  the  Crolden  Hind,  as  well  as  historian  of  the  expedition, 

"  the  reason  I  could  never  understand Therefore  I  leave  it  unto 

God."1  And  Gilbert  himself  wrote  to  Sir  George  Peckham,2  "the 
Ark  Raleigh  ran  from  me  in  fair  and  clear  weather,  having  a  large 
wind.  I  pray  you,  solicit  my  brother  Raleigh  to  make  them  an  ex 
ample  to  all  knaves."  3 

In  all  there  was  a  company  of  about  two  hundred  and  sixty  men, 
among  them  mechanics  of  all  trades  fitted  for  a  new  settlement,  as 
well  as  mineral  men  and  refiners.  On  the  admiral's  ship  was  a 
band  of  music  "  for  solace  of  their  own  people,"  and  they  carried 
such  "  toyes  as  morris-dancers,  hobbie-horses  and  May-like  conceits  to 
delight  the  savage  people,  as  well  as  petty  haberdashrie  wares"  for 
barter  with  them. 

The  vessels  all  arrived  in  due  season  at  the  appointed  place  of  meet- 
Newfound-  ing' — St.  John's,  Newfoundland.  Here  Sir  Humphrey  read 
^nEnCgHshed  to  the  tradesmen  and  fishermen  of  all  nations,  who,  as  had 
territory.  come  to  be  the  settled  custom,  had  gathered  there  for  the 
summer,  his  commission  from  the  queen.  He  took  possession  of  the 
place  and  the  neighboring  country,  for  two  hundred  leagues  in  every 
direction,  with  proper  solemnities,  receiving  a  sod  and  a  twig  in  token 
thereof,  and  setting  up  a  pillar  with  the  arms  of  England  carved  upon 
it.  He  had  gone  there,  however,  only  as  a  convenient  stopping-place 
for  repairs  and  provisions,  on  his  way  to  that  more  southern  country, 
which  was  the  real  object  of  the  expedition.  It  was  a  disastrous 
delay.  Many  of  his  men  deserted  ;  many  were  disabled  by  sickness 
from  further  service  ;  and  some  died.  Altogether  they  were  a  rough 
and  worthless  set,  some  of  whom  had  been  pirates,  and  were  impressed 

1  Hayes'  Narrative,  Hakluyt,  vol.  iii. 

2  Letter  to  Sir  George  Peckham,  Purchas  Pilgrims,  vol.  iii. 

8  Oldys,  in  his  Life  and  Works  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  vol.  i.,  says,  and  others  have  repeated 
it  on  his  authority,  that  Raleigh  was  in  command  of  his  own  ship.  Gilbert's  letter  is  the 
most  conclusive  evidence  that  that  could  not  have  been  the  case.  He  would  not  have  as 
serted  that  a  ship  which  Raleigh  commanded  deserted  in  fair  and  clear  weather,  nor  have 
asked  him  to  punish  as  knaves  the  men  who  were  under  his  orders. 


1583.] 


SIR   HUMPHREY   GILBERT'S   EXPEDITION. 


237 


against  their  will  for  the  voyage.  On  the  passage  out,  the  crew  of 
the  Swallow  had  overhauled  a  French  fishing  vessel,  stripped  her  of 
sails  and  rigging,  and  robbed  the  men  of  provisions  and  clothing, 
leaving  them  to  perish  seven  hundred  leagues  from  land.  At  St. 
John's,  a  conspiracy  was  detected  to  seize  the  vessels  while  the  admiral 
and  the  captains  were  on  shore.  Defeated  in  this,  some  of  the  men 
boarded  a  fishing  vessel,  put  the  crew  ashore,  and  stole  out  to  sea. 
This  accumulation  of  mishaps  made  it  expedient  to  send  the  Sivallow 
home  with  the  sick  and  as  many  of  the  discontented  and  the  insub- 


Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert  reading  his  Commission. 

ordinate  as  could  be  spared,  leaving  Sir  Humphrey  with  only  three 
vessels  and  a  diminished  company. 

At  length  they  resumed  the  voyage.     Doubling'  Gape  Race,  they 
sailed  along  the  west  coast  of  Newfoundland,  as  far  as  Pla-  Logg0f  the 
centia  Bay,  then  headed  for  Cape  Breton  and  Sable  Island,   Delight- 
meaning  to  land  upon  the  latter,  where  they  had  heard  were  great 
store  of  cattle  and  swine,  the  progeny  of  some  left  there  about  thirty 
years  before.     For  a  week  they  struggled  with  contrary  winds,  mak 
ing  only  about  one  hundred  and  twenty  leagues.     In  thick  weather 
and  a  gale  of  wind  they  suddenly  found   themselves,  in    the   early 
morning,  among  breakers  and  on  a  lee  shore,  as  so  many  have  done 


238 


ENGLISH   ATTEMPTS  AT    SETTLEMENT.         [CiiAP.  X. 


since  on  the  dangerous  coasts  of  Nova  Scotia.  Presently  the  Delight, 
the  largest  ship,  struck  and  in  a  few  moments  went  to  pieces.  Seven 
teen  of  her  crew  jumped  into  the  long-boat,  and  after  seven  days  of 
exposure,  without  food  or  water,  fifteen  of  them  reached  Newfound 
land  ;  the  rest  were  drowned ;  among  them  the  captain,  Maurice 
Browne,  who  refused  to  leave  his  ship,  but  "  mounting  upon  the  high 
est  deck  he  attended  imminent  death  and  unavoidable."  These  were 
the  men  who  had  belonged  to  the  Swallow,  and  had  robbed  and  left 
to  "  imminent  death  "  the  crew  of  the  French  fisherman  on  the  out- 


Wreck  of  the   "  Delight." 

ward  passage,  and  that  deed  "justified  to  the  mind,"  said  Captain 
Hayes,  "  God's  judgments  inflicted  upon  them  "  in  this  sudden  ship 
wreck.  The  Golden  Hind  and  the  Squirrel,  warned  in  time  by  the 
fate  of  their  fellow,  hauled  off  and  stood  out  to  sea. 

The  weather  continued  tempestuous  and  cold,  for  winter  was  ap- 
Giibert  re-  proaching  ;  the  land  they  sought  they  could  not  fall  in  with 
-  after  beating  about  for  many  days  ;  provisions  were  failing, 
an(j  imngev  pushing  them  sore  ;  and  it  was  resolved  to  re 
turn  to  England.  Notwithstanding  the  disasters  that  had  attended 


land. 


1583.]  SIR  HUMPHREY   GILBERT'S  EXPEDITION.  239 

the  expedition,  Sir  Humphrey  was  content.  At  St.  John's  one  of  his 
assayers  had  brought  him  an  ore,  which  he  solemnly  affirmed  was  of 
silver,  and  so  persuaded  of  this  was  Gilbert  that  he  believed  he  had 
but  to  return  in  the  spring  to  gather  great  wealth.  This  vision  took 
possession  of  him  and  was  a  great  comfort  in  all  his  trials,  though  it 
did  not  make  him  forget  his  wise  purpose  of  colonization  on  the  con 
tinent  farther  south.  The  specimens  of  the  ore  had  been  left  on  board 
the  Delight,  by  mistake  of  his  servant,  and  the  assayer,  who  knew 
most  about  them,  was  lost  in  that  vessel. 

But  Sir  Humphrey  knew  where  to  find  the  mine.  Hitherto  he  had 
said  little  about  it,  and  had  enjoined  silence  upon  others ;  but  now 
that  he  was  far  out  at  sea  and  returning  to  England  after  so  many 
misfortunes,  he  talked  not  a  little  about  the  great  store  of  silver  in 
his  new  possessions.  The  thing  he  seemed  most  to  regret,  next  to  the 
loss  of  his  men,  was  the  loss  of  the  lumps  of  ore ;  and  when  long  after, 
on  visiting  the  G-olden  Hind  at  sea,  he  met  the  boy  whose  fault  it  was 
that  these  precious  minerals  were  left  on  the  Delight,  he  fell  upon  and 
beat  him  "in  great  rage."  Good  and  pious  and  wise  man  as  he  was 
known  to  be,  he  was  of  a  choleric  and  unforgiving  disposition.  Years 
before,  when  he  was  putting  down  the  rebellion  in  Ireland,  the  castle 
or  fort  that  did  not  surrender  at  his  first  summons,  he  "  would  not 
afterwards,"  he  said,  "  take  it  of  their  gift,  but  won  it  perforce  —  how 
many  lives  so  ever  it  cost ;  putting  man,  woman,  and  child  of  them  to 
the  sword."  There  was  good  reason  why  he  should  be  more  feared 
than  any  other  man  by  the  Irish,  as  Raleigh  said  he  was.  Among  sail 
ors  who  were  pirates  if  they  had  the  opportunity,  and  among  Irish 
outlaws  who  were  no  better  than  half  savages,  he  showed  little  of  the 
quality  of  mercy. 

So  much  did  he  rely  upon  his  mine  of  silver,  that  he  was  sure  the 
queen,  upon  report  thereof,  would  readily  advance  £10,000,  where 
with  he  would  equip  two  fleets  in  the  spring,  one  to  bring  home  the 
ore,  the  other  for  a  new  venture  to  the  south  to  plant  colonies.  "  I 
will  set  you  forth  royally  next  spring,"  he  said  to  his  companions,  "  if 
God  send  us  safe  home."  That  hope  was  not  ill-founded  ;  the  prom 
ise  of  sud4en  wealth  in  the  New  World  was  never  made  to  dull  ears. 
But  it  would  only  have  been  one  more  idle  tale  to  be  confuted,  for 
there  was  no  mine ;  the  colonies,  other  hands  than  his  were  to  plant. 

The  vessel  Gilbert  had  last  embarked  upon  was  the  Squirrel,  the 
smallest  of  the  fleet,  of  only  ten  tons  burden.     He  was  be-  The  8inking 
sought  to  leave  her  and  find  greater  safety  on  board  the  Golden  ^thes£9""" 
Hind;  but  his  answer  was  always:  "I  will  not  forsake  my  GU^^ 
little  company  going  homeward,  with  whom  I  have  passed  so  death- 
many  storms  and  perils."     Severe  as  he  was  he  would  ask  no  man 


240 


ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT    SETTLEMENT.         [CHAP.  X. 


to  do  that  which  he  was  himself  afraid  to  do.  So  small  a  craft  was 
a  poor  thing  in  which  to  cross  the  Atlantic  in  September.  The 
weather  was  foul,  the  waves  "terrible,  breaking  short  and  high  like 

pyramids Never  men  saw  more  outrageous  seas."     On  the 

9th  of  the  month  the  Squirrel  came  near  foundering,  but  rode  out 
the  storm.  The  Crolden  Hind  approached  and  hailed  her,  and  Sir 
Humphrey  Gilbert,  sitting  quietly  in  the  stern  of  the  boat  with  a 
book  in  his  hand,  answered  cheerfully,  "  we  are  as  near  to  heaven  by 
sea  as  by  land."  In  the  darkness  of  the  night  that  followed  they 
anxiously  watched  on  board  the  Hind  for  the  Squirrel's  lights ;  sud 
denly  at  midnight,  "  as  it  were  in  a  moment,"  they  disappeared.  The 
little  vessel  "  was  devoured  and  swallowed  up  of  the  sea." 

The  County  of  Devon  bred  great  men  for  the  reign  of  Elizabeth, 
sir  waiter  an(^  *ne  greatest  of  them  all  was  Walter  Raleigh.  Whatever 
Raleigh.  j.]ie  \OCil\  influence  of  its  maritime  position,  the  contagion  of 
example,  or  the  stimulus  of  noble  emulation  in  families,  did  to  form 

the  characters  of  its  sons,  was  done  in 
larger  share  for  Walter  Raleigh  than 
for  all  the  rest.  His  half  brother, 
Humphrey  Gilbert,  was  a  dozen  years 
his  senior  ;  but  that  difference  did  not 
forbid  close  affection  and  companion 
ship  between  them,  while  it  gave  the 
weight  of  years  to  example  and  pre 
cept.  Walter,  like  Humphrey,  went 
with  the  gallant  band  of  young  Eng 
lishmen,  to  fight  on  the  continent  for 
the  new  faith,  and  against  the  Pope  ; 
like  him  he  served  in  Ireland,  to  sub 
due  the  half  savage  rebels  of  —  as  he 
called  it  —  "that  commonwelthe  or 
rather  common  woo ;  "  like  him  he 
hated  the  Spaniard,  and  longed  for 
adventure  and  discovery ;  and  he  saw,  as  Gilbert  saw,  that  the  way 
to  check  the  growth  and  power  of  Spain  in  the  New  World,  was  to 
take  possession  of  the  thousand  miles  of  sea-coast,  north  of  Florida, 
which  the  curse  of  Spanish  invasion  had  not  yet  blighted,  —  that 
therein  was  to  be  found  the  true  glory  of  England,  and  the  best 
service  to  her  queen.  They  were  true  brothers  in  spirit,  in  character, 
and  in  determined  purpose,  even  more  than  in  blood. 

Raleigh's  loss  was  not  a  slight  one  in  the  desertion,  at  the  outset,  of 
the  ship  —  the  Raleigh  —  which  he  had  built  and  fitted  out  at  his  own 
charges ;  but  that  wras  as  nothing  to  the  loss  of  his  friend  and  brother, 


Sir  Walter    Raleigh. 


1584.]  RALEIGH'S   FIRST  EXPEDITION.  241 

whose  heroic  death  the  Grolden  Hind  reported  within  a  few  days  in 
England.    Neither  discouraged  him,  and.  he  seems  to  have  accepted  the 
last  as  imposing  upon  him  the  new  duty  of  carrying  out  alone  the 
projects  in  which   hitherto  he  had  been  content  to  second  his  half 
brother.     Gilbert's  patent  was  so  near  the  time  of  its  ex-   Ra^^oi,. 
piration  as  to  be  useless  for  any  fresh  enterprise ;  and  as  all  ^tnesntof 
knowledge  of  the  supposed  silver  mine  was  lost  with  him,    Gilbert- 
Raleigh  had  no  special  motive  for  planting  a  colony  so  far  north  as 
Newfoundland.    With  the  promptitude  and  energy  so  characteristic  of 
the  man,  he  at  once  set  himself  to  work,  and  in  March,  1584,  had 
secured  from  the  queen  a  new  patent  with  enlarged  powers  and  priv 
ileges.     A  month  later  two  ships,  well  manned  and  victualed,  sailed 
down  the  Thames  and  put  to  sea,  under  the  command  of  Captain 
Philip  Amadas  and  Arthur  Barlow. 

This  evidently  was  only  a  voyage  of   exploration,  to  find  the  place 
best  adapted  for  the  future  colony.     They  sailed  by  way  of 
the  Canaries  and  the  West  Indies,  for  navigators  had  not  pedition. 

.  1584 

yet  learned  to  venture  out  of  the  course  laid  down  by  Co 
lumbus  a  century  before,  except  when  seeking  those  northern  parts 
about  the  great  river  of  Canada.  It  was  sixty-six  days  before  the 
smell  of  the  land,  "  so  sweet  and  so  strong  a  smell,  as  if  wee  had  been 
in  the  midst  of  some  delicate  garden  abounding  with  all  kinds  of  odo 
riferous  flowers,"  warned  them  of  their  near  approach  to  the  Western 
Continent,  and  two  days  more  —  July  4th  —  before  they  saw  the  low, 
sandy  shore  of  North  Carolina. 

Presuming  this  to  be  the  main  land,  they  kept  along  the  coast 
for  one  hundred  and  twenty  miles,  seeking  for  a  good  harbor,  and  then 
entered  an  inlet,  supposing  it  to  be  the  mouth  of  a  river.  After  their 
long  and  weary  voyage,  worn  out  with  the  heat,  and  suffering  from  the 
malaria  of  the  tropics,  they  were  enraptured  with  the  region  upon 
which  they  had  fallen,  more  by  chance  than  design.  The  cool  sea- 
breeze  tempered  the  heats  of  July ;  the  waves  rippled  gently  upon 
the  white  sands  of  the  beach,  lifting  in  their  ebb  and  flow  the  grace 
ful  branches  and  clustering  fruit  of  the  vine  which  climbed  every  tree 
and  bush  down  to  the  water's  edge.  The  land  rose  gradually  into  low 
hills,  crowned  with  cedars  more  stately  and  more  beautiful  than  the 
cedars  of  Lebanon. 

Mounting  one  of  these  hills  they  saw  that  they  were  upon  an  isl 
and  about  sixteen  miles  in  length,  the  sea  stretching  on  both 
sides  further  north  and  south  than  the  eye  could  reach.     The  Barlow  and 
main  land  was  still  distant.     As  they  afterward  discovered, 
and    as  Vei-azzano  had  observed  sixty  years  before,  there  ran  along 
this  coast  for  many  miles  a  chain  of  long  and  narrow  islands  washed 


242 


ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT   SETTLEMENT.         [Ciixp.  X. 


on  one  side  by  the  ocean  and  on  the  other  by  an  inner  sea  from  twenty 
to  fifty  miles  in  breadth.  In  />ne  of  the  connecting  inlets  Amadas  and 
Barlow  had  found  a  harbor  and  had  anchored  their  vessels  in  Pamlico 
Sound. 

The  island  on  which  they  landed  has  been  generally  supposed  to  be 
Wocokon,  identical  with  that  now  known  as  Ocracoke,  lying  between 
Hatteras  and  Ocracoke  inlets.1  But  on  the  map  accompanying  Harl 
ot's  "  Briefe  and  True  Relation  of  the  New  found  Land  of  Virginia," 
published  by  De  Bry  in  1590,  the  island  beginning  next  south  of  Cape 


Landing  on  the  Island. 

Hatteras,  is  called  Croatoan,  and  the  second  island  south  of  that  is 
Wocokon.  Ocracoke,  therefore,  is  that  which  was  then  called  Croa 
toan,  while  that  then  known  as  Wocokon,  is  now,  probably,  Ports 
mouth  Island.2  The  first  footprints  of  the  coming  nation  of  Bug- 

1  See    Stith's    Virginia ;    Holmes'  Annals ;   Belknap's    American   Biography ;   Bancroft's 
History  of  the  United  States  ;  Hildreth's  History,  and  others. 

2  In  the  original  narrative,  the  source  of  all  that  is  known  of  this  voyage,  written  by  Cap 
tain  Barlow,1  no  name  is  given  to  the  island  on  which  the  expedition  first  landed.     But  in 
describing  the  boundaries  of  the  territory  under  the  separate  rule  of  different  Indian  chiefs, 
the  southernmost  town  of  one  of  them  is  placed  on  what  is  now  known  as  Pamlico  River, 
and  Wocokon  is  referred  to  as  not  far  distant.     The  unnamed  island  where  thev  first  went 
ashore,  was,  says  Captain  Barlow's  narrative,  about  twenty  miles  from  Koanoke  Island ; 
and  from  the  Occam  —  Albemarle  Sound  —at  the  entrance  of  which  lay  Koanoke,  to  the 

1  In  Hakluyt,  vol.  Hi.,  p.  246 


1584.] 


RALEIGH'S   FIRST   EXPEDITION. 


243 


lish  blood  on  the  shores  of  the  New  World  were  made  not  at  Ocracoke 
but  on  the  low  sandy  beach  of  Chickeonocomack  Bank,  still  Exact  ^^ 
often  called  by  the  people  of  the  neighborhood  Hatteras,  of  landin«- 
Cape  Hatteras,  or  Hatteras  Bank.  And  as  the  inlet,  through  which 
the  ships  of  Amadas  and  Barlow  entered  Pamlico  Sound,  was  twenty 
miles  from  Roanoke  Island,  that  channel  must  in  the  course  of  time 
have  been  filled  by  the  shifting  sands,  while  New  Inlet,  which  is  only 


Map   in   Harlot's   "  Relation."     [Fac-simile.] 

twelve  and  a  half  miles  from  Roanoke,  has  been  formed  —  as  its  name 
implies  —  since  the  settlement  of  the  country. 

The  ships  had  not  long  to  wait  for  a  visit  from  the  natives.     On 
the  third  day  came  three  Indians  across  the  sound  in  canoes,   vlsits  from 
one  of  whom  ventured  boldly  among  the  strangers,  was  shown  the  natlves- 
about  the  ships,  entertained  with  wine  and  food,  and  made  happy  by 
presents  of  a  shirt  and  some   other  trifles.     In  return  he  loaded  his 

Indian  town  near  Wocokon,  was  four  days'  journey.  Then  Strachey,  who  was  the  first 
secretary  of  the  first  permanent  Virginia  colony,  founded  twenty -three  years  afterward,  and 
who  was  probably  familiar  with  the  whole  region,  says  of  Amadas  and  Barlow,  —  "they 
arrived  upon  the  coast  in  a  harborow  called  Hatorask ; "  and  he  subsequently  confirms,  while 
he  follows  the  original  narrative  by  adding,  "to  the  so-ward  four  daies  journey,  they  discov 
ered  Socoto  the  last  town  southwardly  of  Wincandacoa"  "neare  unto  which"  was  Woco 
kon,  an  "out  island."1  On  the  map  of  1590  in  Harlot's  Relation,  "Hatoras"  is  laid  down 
as  at  the  first  inlet  north  of  the  point  now  called  Cape  Hatteras. 

1  The  Historic  of  Travaile  into  Virginia  Britannia,  etc.,  by  William  Strachey,  Gent.     First  published  in 
1849,  by  the  Hakluyt  Society.  London,  pp.  Ia2, 143. 


244  ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT   SETTLEMENT          [CHAP.  X. 

canoe  with  fish,  fresh  caught  in  the  sound,  and  piling  them  up  in  two 
heaps  upon  the  sand  signified  by  signs  that  one  was  for  each  ship. 
The  next  day  there  came  many  boats  bringing  forty  or  fifty  men,  led 
by  Granganameo,  the  brother  of  the  king  of  that  country.  From  him 
the  Englishmen  learned  that  the  region  round  about  was  called  Win- 
gandacoa,  whereof  Wingina,  then  ill  at  home  from  a  wound  received 
in  battle,  was  the  king.  These  visitors  were  a  "  handsome  and  goodly 
people,  and  in  their  behaviour  as  mannerly  and  civil  as  any  in 
Europe." 

Afterward  they  came  in  greater  numbers  and  in  entire  confidence 
and  cordialty,  bringing  food  and  skins,  and  accepting  in  return  what 
ever  the  strange  white  men  — at  whose  whiteness  they  "  wondered 
marvellously  " — chose  to  give.  They  soon  brought  with  them  their 
wives  and  children,  and  among  them  was  the  wife  of  Granganameo,  a 
"  woman  very  well  favoured,  of  meane  (medium)  stature  and  very  bash 
ful  ;  she  had  on  her  backe  a  long  cloake  of  leather,  with  the  furre  side 
next  to  her  body,  and  before  her  a  piece  of  the  same  :  about  her  forehead 
she  had  a  bande  of  wite  Corall,  and  so  had  her  husband  many  times  : 
in  her  eares  she  had  bracelets  of  pearles  hanging  downe  to  her  mid 
dle,  and  those  were  of  the  bignes  of  good  pease."  Such  was  a  Vir 
ginia  princess  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

A  few  days  later  Captain  Barlow,  with  seven  men,  went  up  the 
Indian  hos-  Occam  —  Albemarle  Sound  —  for  twenty  miles,  and  on  re- 
pitaiity.  turning  landed  on  the  north  end  of  Raonoak  (Roanoke)  isl 
and.  Here  in  a  palisaded  village  of  nine  houses,  built  of  cedar,  was  the 

residence  of  the  chief  Granganameo  ; 
and  here  this  modest  wife  —  he  being 
absent — received  and  entertained  their 
new  friends  with  a  boundless  and  grace 
ful  hospitality.  Her  house  of  five 
rooms  she  put  at  their  disposal  ;  she 
and  her  women  fed  them  with  the 
best  that  field,  forest,  and  rivers,  and 
Indian  skill  could  provide ;  washed  and 
dried  their  clothing  ;  bathed  their  feet 
in  warm  water.  And  she  disarmed 
her  men  that  the  confidence  of  her 
guests  might  remain  undisturbed,  and 
sent  guards  to  watch  by  the  river  bank 

Lord  and   Lady  of  Secotan.     [From  De   Bry.]  " 

that  no  danger  should  approach  while 

they  slept  in  peace  in  their  boat,  covered  by  the  dressed  skins  she 
gave  them. 

The  adventurers  were  back  again  in  England  by  the  middle  of  Sep- 


1584.] 


RALEIGH'S   FIRST   EXPEDITION. 


245 


tember,  having  spent,  perhaps,  six  weeks  among  a  people  so  attractive 

and  so  simple,  amid  scenes  so  novel.     Of  the  country  they  said  "  the 

soile  is  the  most  plentifull,  sweete,  fruitfull  and  wholesome  of  all  the 

worlde  ;  "  of  trees  they  found  fourteen  "  of  sweet  smelling  Enthusiastic 

timber  ;  "  the  oaks  were  of  as  many  kinds  as  in  England,  ^°adven- 

but  "  far  greater  and  better  ;  "  the  fruits  were  "  of  divers  turers- 

kinds,  and  very  excellent  good,"  such  as  "  melons,  walnuts,  cucumbers, 

gourdes,  pease,"  and  "  grapes  in  all  the  world  the  like  abundance  is 

not  to  be  found  ;  "  the 

corn     of     the     country 

[maize]  was  very  white, 

fair  and  well  tasted,  and 

there  were  three  crops 

from   May  to    Septem 

ber  ;  the  fish  were  the 

best  in  the  world  and 

in  greatest  abundance  ; 

of  "  divers  beasts"  they 

name  fat  bucks,  conies, 

and     hares  ;     and     for 

the  people,  —  they  were 

"  most     gentle,     loving 

and  faithful,  void  of  all 

guile    and  treason,  and 

such   as    live   after  the 

maner    of    the    golden 

age."  1    As  witnesses  to 

the  truthfulness  of  this 

pleasing  picture  of  the 

new   found   land,    they 

carried  back  with  them 

to  England  two  of  the 

natives  named  Manteo 

and  Wanchese  ;  some  of  its  products,  "  as  chamois,  buffalo  and  deer 

skins,"  and  "  a  bracelet  of  pearls  as  big  as  peas  "  for  Sir  Walter 

Raleigh. 

The  effect  of  such  a  report  was  very  marked  in  England.     In  the 
name  of  a  virgin  queen  Raleigh  was  permitted  to  call  the  The  ^^ 
new  country  Virginia  ;  as  a  reward  for  his  part  in  its  dis-  named  vir- 
covery  the  honor  of  knighthood  was  bestowed  upon  him  ;  to 
his  arms  was  added  the  legend,  Propria  insignia  Walteri  Ralegh,  mili- 
tis,  Domini,  et  Grubernatoris  Pwytm'o?/2  and  perhaps  that  he  might 

1  Captain  Barlow's  "Narrative  "  in  Hakluyt. 

2  Edwards'  Life  of  Raleigh,  vol.  i.,  p.  87. 


Queen   Elizabeth. 


246  ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT    SETTLEMENT.         [CHAP.  X. 

have  the  means  to  persevere  in  this  enterprise  he  was  enriched  with  a 
monopoly  in  the  granting  licenses  for  the  sale  of  certain  wines.  Al 
ready  a  favorite  with  Elizabeth,  he  entered  now  more  actively  into 
public  affairs  as  member  of  parliament  for  the  County  of  Devon,  and 
procured  from  that  body  a  confirmation  of  the  royal  patent  for  the 
possession  and  colonization  of  foreign  lands. 

In  the  spring  a  larger  expedition  and  with  a  more  definite  purpose 
was  fitted  out.     On  the  9th  of  April,  1585,  a  fleet  of  seven 

Raleigh's  .  . 

colony  un-     ships,  under  command  of  Sir  Richard  Grenville,  sailed  from 

der  Sir  Rich-  r 

ard  Gi-en-      Plymouth.      On  board  were  about   one    hundred    men  who 

ville.  1585.  J 

were  to  form  the  future  colony.  Of  this  Ralph  Lane  was 
to  be  the  governor  ;  Philip  Amadas,  who  in  this  as  in  the  expedition 
of  the  previous  year,  commanded  a  ship,  was  his  deputy  ;  of  another 
ship  Sir  Thomas  Cavendish,  a  young  gentleman  just  come  of  age  and 
into  his  inheritance  by  the  death  of  his  father,  was  owner  and  cap 
tain  ;  Thomas  Hariot,  the  mathematician  and  astronomer,  went  as 
the  scientific  man  of  the  expedition.  One  John  White  was  the  artist, 
and  his  sketches  are  among  the  earliest,  the  most  authentic,  and 
the  most  valuable  of  the  habits  and  appearance  —  though  no  doubt 
somewhat  idealized  —  of  the  natives  of  Virginia  as  the  Englishmen 
found  them. 

Altogether  it  was  a  notable  company.  Lane  was  already  a  sol 
dier  of  reputation  and  was  after 
wards  knighted  by  the  queen. 
Cavendish,  just  out  of  boyhood, 
made,  a  year  later,  the  most  fa 
mous  voyage  of  the  time  around 

Signature  of  Ralph   Lane.  t]le  WOl'ld,  ill   which  he  gave  SOUie 

valuable  contributions  to  geographical   knowledge  ;  and   he  specially 

commended  himself  to  the  affectionate  respect  of  his  country- 
Notable  .  •' 
men  in  the     men  and  the  approbation  of  the  queen,  for  he  wrote  on  his 

colony. 

return,  "  I  burnt  and  sunk  nineteen  sail  of  ships,  small  and 
great ;  and  all  the  villages  and  towns  that  ever  I  landed  at  I  burned 
and  spoiled," -  — ships,  towns,  and  villages  being  all  Spanish.  Hariot 
was  Raleigh's  friend  to  the  end  of  his  career ;  aided  him  in  that  "  His 
tory  of  the  World"  which  he  wrote  in  the  Tower;  and  because  of  this 
friendship,  was  thought  worthy  to  be  called  from  the  bench  a  "  devil " 
by  Chief  Justice  Popham.  Of  him  it  is  questioned  whether  he  or 
Des  Cartes  invented  the  system  of  algebraic  notation  ;  whether  he  or 
Galileo  was  the  first  observer  of  spots  upon  the  sun,  and  of  the  satel 
lites  of  Jupiter,  —  the  testimony  in  Harlot's  favor  being  not  trivial. 
Grenville,  the  admiral,  was  Raleigh's  kinsman  and  his  dear  friend. 
Five  years  later,  off  the  Azores,  he  in  his  single  ship  fought  fifteen 


1585.]  THE   RALEIGH-GRENVILLE   COLONY.  247 

great  Spanish  galleons  for  fifteen  hours,  and  when  at  last  mortally 
wounded,  said  with  his  last  breath  in  the  heat  and  smoke  of  battle, 
"  Here  die  I,  Richard  Grenville,  with  a  joyful  and  quiet  mind,  for 
that  I  have  ended  my  life,  as  a  true  soldier  ought  to  do,  fighting  for 
his  country,  queen,  religion  and  honour." 

It  was  men  of  this  stamp  who  entered  into  the  projects  of  Raleigh 
to  plant  English  people,  with  English  law  and  English  civilization,  in 
the  New  World.  English  hatred  of  the  Spaniard  took  that  direction 
—  that  the  growth  of  Spanish  power  and  dominion  and  wealth  should 
be  checked  beyond  the  sea  as  well  as  on  it.  Nor  was  Raleigh's  policy 
confined  to  North  America.  But  here  we  have  nothing  to  do  with  his 
romantic  expeditions  to  Guiana,  the  last  one  a  brief  and  sad  interval 
between  his  release  from  twelve  years'  imprisonment  in  the  Tower 
and  his  mounting  the  scaffold  at  Westminster  Gate  House.  There, 
feeling  with  his  finger  the  edge  of  the  axe,  he  said,  "  It  is  a  sharp 
and  fair  medicine  to  cure  me  of  all  my  diseases ; "  and  to  a  hesitat 
ing  executioner,  he  added,  "  What  dost  thou  fear?  Strike  man, 
strike ! "  That  which  was  glory  under  Elizabeth  was  treason  under 
James. 

Every  man  who  went  with  Grenville  hated  Spain  as  Raleigh  hated 
her.  The  fleet  sailed  by  way  of  the  Canaries  and  the  West  Indies, 
spoiling  the  Spaniards  wherever  the  opportunity  offered,  taking  two 
of  their  frigates,  one  of  which  "  had  a  good  and  rich  fraight  and  divers 
Spaniards  of  account  in  her  which  afterwards  were  ransomed  for  good 
round  summes."  On  his  return  voyage  in  August,  the  admiral  fell 
in  with  another  richly  laden  Spaniard  which  he  took,  he  and  his  men 
boarding  her  in  a  boat,  made  on  the  instant  and  so  hastily  knocked 
together  that  it  fell  to  pieces  as  they  sprang  from  it  to  the  deck  of  the 
enemy. 

It  was  nearly  three  months  from  the  time  they  left  Plymouth  be 
fore  they  had  their  first  sight  of  the  American  coast  south  of  Arrival  at 
Cape    Fear.     Standing    northward    they   narrowly   escaped    Hr°cokon- 
shipwreck  at  that   stormy  point,  and    three   days  afterward    landed 
as  the  original  narrative  distinctly  says,  at  Wocokon. 

Word  was  sent  to  Roanoke  Island,  by  the  Indian  Manteo,  of  the 
return  of  the  English.  But  the  pleasant  relations  with  the  natives, 
established  the  year  before,  were  soon  disturbed.  Grenville  with  his 
captains  and  other  principal  men  of  his  fleet  started  almost  imme 
diately  for  an  excursion  of  eight  days  further  inland.  Crossing  Parn- 
lico  Sound  they  visited  several  Indian  villages  along  the  coast  of  the 
present  Hyde  County,  North  Carolina,  and  the  lake  which  the  sav 
ages  called  Paquipo,  now  named  Mattamuskeet  Lake.  In  one  of 
these  villages  a  silver  cup  was  stolen  by  an  Indian,  and  not  being 


248 


ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT   SETTLEMENT.         [CHAP.  X. 


speedily  returned,  they  burnt  and  spoiled  their  corn  and  town,  says 
the  narrative,  all  the  people  being  fled.  Grenville  soon  returned  to 
England  with  a  portion  of  the  fleet ;  but  Lane,  who  remained  as  gov 
ernor,  followed,  in  the  subsequent  intercourse  with  the  Indians,  the 
evil  example  thus  set  him, —  found  it,  perhaps,  difficult  to  do  any 
thing  else  when  the  fears  and  the  passions  of  the  savages  were  once 


An   Indian   Village.      [From   Harlot's   "Relation"      Fac-simile.] 

aroused  by  such  an  act  of  cruel  injustice.  Peace  for  a  time  was  kept 
by  Granganameo,  and  his  father  Ensenore,  an  old  and  venerable  man  ; 
but  they  both  died  in  the  course  of  the  winter  and  spring,  and  with 
them  all  memory  of  the  kindly  intercourse  of  the  year  before  was 
lost. 

Wingina,  —  who  called  himself  Pemissapan  after  the  death  of  his 
brother,  Granganameo,  —  the  chief  of  the  country  round  about  Roan- 
oke  Island,  threw  off  at  length  all  pretences  of  friendship.  He 


1585.]  THE   RALEIGH-GRENVILLE   COLONY.  249 

and  his  subjects  alone  had  been  under  the  kindly  influences  of  the 
visitors  of  the  year  before,  while  tribes  farther  off  had  not  come  in 
contact  with  Amadas  and  Barlow.  This  second  expedition  had  begun 
with  burning  a  village  on  Pamlico  River ;  some  of  the  men  made  their 
way  almost  as  far  north  as  Chesapeake  Bay ;  Lane  with  two  boats 
penetrated  the  interior  far  up  the  Chowan  and  the  Roanoke  rivers  ; 
and  wherever  the  strangers  went  it  was  with  such  evident  purpose 
and  spirit  as  to  excite  throughout  all  this  region  at  first  secret  mis 
trust  and  dread,  and  then  open  warfare.  The  son  of  one  powerful 
chief  Lane  carried  about  with  him  as  a  prisoner,  sometimes  putting 
him  in  "  the  bilboes  "  and  threatening  to  cut  off  his  head.  The  sim 
ple,  trustful,  and  kindly  natives  whom  Barlow  had  found  only  a  year 
before  living,  as  he  said,  after  the  manner  of  those  of  the  Golden  Age, 
were  suddenly  transformed  into  wily  savages.  They  hated  and  feared 
the  Englishmen  who,  they  believed,  had  brought  pestilence  change  in 
among  them,  and  who  could  kill  them  with  invisible  bullets,  oiTtheTa" 
though  they  fled  far  out  of  sight  into  the  most  secret  recesses  tives- 
of  the  forest.  To  submit  to  the  presence  of  the  strangers  was,  they 
feared,  to  consent  to  their  own  final  extermination,  and  they  acted  ac 
cordingly.  Pemissapan  proposed  to  starve  out  the  colony  on  Roan- 
oake  Island  by  planting  no  maize,  hoping  that  the  men  would  separate 
themselves  into  small  companies  to  seek  for  subsistence,  and  could 
then  be  cut  off  in  detail.  Ensemore,  Pemissapan's  father,  persuaded 
him  to  forego  this  project,  and  fortunately  the  seed  was  sown  before 
the  old  man  died  in  April.  Then  the  chief  entered  into  conspiracies 
with  the  heads  of  other  tribes,  ventured  at  last  upon  an  attack  on  the 
colony,  and  lost  his  life. 

But  Lane,  meanwhile,  had  pushed  up  the  Roanoke  River,  beguiled 
by  a  tale  of  the  abundance  of  pearls,  of  a  rich  mine  of  copper,  Governor 
and  that  the  head  waters  of  the  river  were  so  near  a  sea  that  £f0°egethe 
the  waves   thereof  would  break  into  it  in  stormy  weather.  Roanoke- 
The  mine  they  may  have  thought  was  gold,  as  probably  it  was  ;  the 
Spaniards  before  them  had  heard  of  the  smelting  of  gold  in  North 
Carolina.     Lane  and  his  men  did  not  go  far  enough  to  find  either  the 
gold  or  the  passage  to  the  South  Sea ;   but  the  Indians  kept  them 
ever  on  the  watch  with  their  frightful  war-whoops ;   starvation  was 
so  imminent  that  they  were  reduced  to  a  pottage  of  sassafras  leaves 
and  a  porridge  of  dogs'-meat ;  and  the  captain  concluded  that  noth 
ing  else  but  a  good  mine,  or  a  passage  to  the  South  Sea,  could  bring 
the  country  "  into  request  to  be  inhabited  by  our  nation,"  notwith 
standing  the  fatness  of  the  soil  and  "  its  most  swete  and  beautifullest 
climate." 

Soon  after  Lane's  return  from  this  expedition  and  when  the  enmity 


250 


ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT   SETTLEMENT.        [CHAP.  X. 


among  the  Indians  about  Roanoke  Island  had  broken  out  into  open 
visit  of  hostilities,  a  fleet  of  twenty-three  ships,  commanded  by  Sir 
Drake'to  the  Francis  Drake,  appeared  off  the  coast.  They  were  fresh  from 
colony.  1586.  £ne  sac^  of  g^  Augustine,  and  called  to  get  tidings  of  the 
progress  of  the  Virginian  colony,  and  give  it  help  if  needed.  Drake 

loaded  a  well -manned  ship  with 
provisions  to  leave  with  Lane, 
but  a  storm  soon  after  dispersed 
his  fleet,  and  this  ship  with 
others  was  driven  out  to  sea  and 
returned  to  England.  Another 
vessel  was  put  at  the  governor's 
disposal  and  the  question  sub 
mitted  by  him  to  the  colonists 
whether  they  would  remain  or 
return  home.  They  had  given 
up  all  hope  of  the  succor  which 
Grenville  had  promised  to  send 
them ;  a  year's  trial  of  the  hard 
ships  of  the  wilderness  and  the 
disappointment  about  the  mine 
had  so  completely  disheartened 
them  that  they  clamored  to  leave 
the  country.  They  carried  to 
bacco  with  them,  which  was 
then,  it  is  supposed,  introduced 
for  the  first  time  into  England.1 
In  such  haste  did  they  take  their  departure  2  that  "  they  left,"  says 
a  narrator,  "  all  things  confusedly,  as  if  they  had  been  chased  thence 

1  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  made  the  smoking  of  tobacco  fashionable  among  the  courtiers,  aud 
even  Elizabeth  and  the  ladies  of  the  court  are  said  to  have  followed  his  example.    Its  culti 
vation  and  use,  seem  to  have  been  universal  among  the  North  American   Indians.      The 
Portuguese  introduced  it  into  Europe.     Lord  Nicot,  French  Ambassador  to  Portugal,  in 
1559, 1560,  and  1561,  sent  the  seeds  to  France,  and  from  him  it  was  named  Nicotinna.   It  was 
held  as  a  sovereign  remedy  for  some  diseases,  especially  ulcers.     (Maison  Rnstique,  or  the 
Countrie  Farm.     Translated  into  English  by  Robert  Snrflet  Practitioner  in  Physicke.     London, 
1600.)     Hariot,  in  his  Brief e  and  True  Report  of  the  New  found  land  of  Virginia,  and  its  Com 
modities,  says  the  Indians  called  tobacco  Uppowoc,  and  that  "  the  leaves  thereof  being  dried 
and  brought  into  powder  they  use  to  take  the  fume  or  smoke  thereof,  by  sucking  it  thorew 
pipes  mads  of  clay,  into  their  stomacke  and  head  ;    from  whence  it  purgeth  superfluous 
fleame  and  other  grosse  humours,  and  openeth  all  the  pores  and  passages  of  the  body  ;  by 
which  meanes  the  use  thereof  not  only  preserveth  the  body  from  obstructions,  but  also  (if 
any  be,  so  that  they  have  not  been  of  too  long  continuance)  in  short  time  breaketh  them: 
whereof  their  bodies  are  notably  preserved  in  health,  and  know  not  many  grievous  diseases, 
wherewithal  wee  in  England  are  oftentimes  afflicted."     The  Carribbees  called  their  pipes 
Tobacco,  and  the  Spaniards  transferred  the  word  to  the  herb  itself. 

2  Hakluyt,  vol.  iii.,  p.  265. 


Tobacco    Plant. 


1587.]  THE    CITY   OF   RALEIGH.  251 

by  a  mighty  army,  and  no  doubt  so  they  were  ;  for  the  hand  of  God 
came  upon  them  for  the  cruelty  and  outrages  committed  by  some  of 
them  against  the  native  inhabitants  of  that  countrey."     But  Raleigh 
had  not  forgotten  them.     Drake's  fleet  had  not  been  long  at  sea  be 
fore  a  ship  arrived  at  Hatorask  well  freighted  with  all  things  needful 
for  their  relief.  Finding  Roanoke  Island  deserted,  they  set  sail  again  for 
England,  and  had  been  gone  only  a  fortnight  when  Sir  Rich 
ard  Grenville  himself  arrived  with  three  ships  well  provided  turns  to 
with  supplies  for  the  colony.     As  there  was  no  colony  to  re 
lieve  he  landed  fifteen 1  men  to  hold  possession,  consoling  himself  for 
his  fruitless  errand  by  spoiling  some  towns  in  the  Azores  and  taking 
some  Spaniards  on  his  homeward  passage. 

Raleigh  was  not  discouraged  by  these  repeated  reverses,  but  the  next 
summer  (1587)  sent  a  new  colony  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  Thecityof 
men.  He  gave  it  a  charter,  and  incorporated  it  under  the  ^rporated 
name  of  the  Governor  and  Assistants  of  the  City  of  Raleigh,  1587- 
Virginia.  The  company  included  women  as  well  as  men.  The  gov^ 
ernor  was  John  White,  and  Simon  Ferdinando,  who  had  been  a  captain 
of  one  of  Grenville's  ships  two  years  before,  was  admiral.  There  was 
utter  want  of  harmony  and  cooperation  between  these  two  men  from 
the  hour  of  sailing  to  the  end  of  the  voyage,  —  an  element  in  the  ex 
pedition  necessarily  fatal  to  its  success.  What  Ferdinando  thought 
of  White  we  do  not  know ;  but  White's  opinion  of  Ferdinando  he  has 
left  on  record.  The  Admiral  was  passionate,  wilful,  given  to  much 
swearing — "tearing  God  to  pieces,"  says  White  —  and  clearly  had 
his  own  way  always.  That  way  was,  if  we  may  believe  White,  an 
intention  to  ruin  as  well  as  rule.  One  of  the  vessels  he  is  accused 
of  leaving  at  a  port  in  the  West  Indies,  stealing  away  in  the  night 
in  his  own  ship,  hoping  that  her  captain  would  never,  for  want 
of  knowledge,  reach  Virginia,  or  that  he  would  be  taken  by  the 
Spaniards.  It  was  White's  intention  to  go  up  the  Chesapeake  Bay, 
in  accordance  with  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  orders,  to  find  a  seat  for  his 
colony,  after  looking  on  Roanoke  Island  for  the  fifteen  men  whom 
Grenville  had  left  there  the  year  before.  But  when  Ferdinando  had 
got  forty  of  the  colonists  on  board  the  pinnace  at  Hatorask  to  go 
to  the  island,  he  ordered  the  sailors  not  to  bring  them  back  again, 
declaring  that  the  summer  was  too  far  gone  to  admit  of  time  being 
spent  in  seeking  for  the  best  spot  for  a  settlement.  The  two  men 
were  governed  by  different  motives :  one  was  for  delay  ;  the  other 
for  speed ;  the  governor  wanted  time  to  move  with  caution  and  con 
sider  consequences  ;  the  sailor  wanted  to  reach  his  port  and  discharge 

1  Hakluyt,  vol.  iii.,  p.  265,  also  Strachey,  p.  150.     Smith,  Stith,  and  others  who  follow 
them  say  erroneously  fifty  men  were  left  by  Greuville. 


252  ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT    SETTLEMENT.         [CHAP.  X. 

his  cargo,   looking  forward  to  some   new  venture,  —  probably  some 
homeward-bound  Spaniard  laden  with  treasure. 

The  fifteen  men  whom  Grenville  had  left  at  Roanoke  were  not  to 
be  found.     The  fort  was  razed  to  the  ground  ;  the  huts  were 

Governor  TIT  •   i  i  • 

white  and     standing,  but  they  were  overgrown  with  melon- vines,  and  the 

his  colony  J  ° 

on  iioiinoke  deer  roamed  through  them  undisturbed  by  any  fear  of  human 
presence.  The  whitening  bones  of  one  man  were  the  only 
sign  of  recent  habitation.  All  that  White  could  learn  of  the  fate  of 
his  countrymen  was  that  they  had  been  attacked  by  the  Indians,  two 
of  them  killed  and  the  rest  driven  to  a  little  island  in  the  harbor  of 
Hatorask.  They  could  be  traced  no  farther. 

The  fleet  remained  a  little  more  than  a  month,  but  before  it  sailed 
the  enmity  between  the  Englishmen  and  the  Indians  was  renewed 
with  fresh  fury.  One  of  the  assistants,  Mr.  Howe,  while  searching 
alone  for  shell-fish  along  the  beach  of  Roanoke  Island,  was  killed  by 
some  of  the  tribe  of  which  Pemissippan  had  been  chief.  To  revenge 
his  death  an  attack  was  made  before  daylight  upon  an  encampment 
of  Indians,  who,  after  one  of  them  was  killed,  were  found  to  be 
friends  from  Croatan  where  Manteo's  people  lived.  The  effect  upon 
the  Croatans  of  this  unhappy  blunder  was  probably  not  favorable  to 
their  continued  friendship,  though  they  may  have  been  appeased  for 
the  moment  by  the  subsequent  christening  of  Manteo  who,  by  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh's  order,  was,  in  reward  of  his  faithfulness  to  the 
English,  baptized  with  due  ceremony  under  the  name  of  Lord  of 
Roanoke  and  Dasamonquepeuk.  Before  the  fleet  sailed,  also,  the 
daughter  of  White,  the  wife  of  Ananias  Dare,  one  of  the  assistants, 
gave  birth,  August  18,  to  a  daughter,  who  was  christened  Virginia  — 
the  first  child  of  English  parentage  born  upon  the  territory  of  the 
present  United  States. 

White  returned  to  England  to  ask  for  further  assistance.     He  says 
he  went  at  the  earnest  solicitation  of  all  the  colonists ;  but 

White  goes  •          c  T  i 

back  to  it  seems  unlikely  that  a  necessity  for  sending  the  governor 
on  such  an  errand  could  have  arisen  within  a  month  of  their 
arrival.  The  anxious  desire,  so  evident  in  his  narrative,  to  justify 
his  going,  indicates  that  it  was  his  own  wish  rather  than  the  wish  of 
those  he  left  behind  him,  to  get  back  to  England.  He  never  suc 
ceeded  in  anything  he  undertook  for  the  colony,  and  never  failed  in 
ingeniously  finding  reasons  for  the  failure  in  the  conduct  of  other 
people. 

Only  one  single  word  was  ever  again  heard  directly  from  the  colony. 
White  sailed  from  Roanoke  on  the  27th  of  August,  1587  ;  it  was  the 
9th  of  the  same  month,  three  years  later,  — 1590  —  before  he  again 
set  foot  in  Virginia.  There  was  no  help  at  first  for  this  delay.  When 


1590.]  WHITE'S   LAST  VOYAGE.  253 

White  reached  home  England  was  busy  from  one  end  to  the  other  in 
raising  recruits  for  the  army  to  resist  the  threatened  Spanish  invasion ; 
every  ship  in  her  ports  was  pressed  into  the  naval  service  in  one  ca 
pacity  or  another.  Sir  Francis  Drake,  who,  that  year,  cruising  along 
the  coasts  of  Spain  destroyed  a  hundred  of  her  ships,  wrote  to  Lord 
Burleigh  :  "  Assuredly  there  never  was  heard  of  or  known  so  great 
preparations  as  the  king  of  Spain  hath  and  daily  maketh  ready  for  the 
invasion  of  England."  In  the  summer  of  1588  the  Armada  of  one 
hundred  and  forty  ships  was  in  the  Channel;  Raleigh,  as  he  Warbe. 
had  been  among  the  foremost  to  arouse,  arm,  and  drill  the  iaVndaifdng~ 
people  to  repel  the  invaders,  so  now  he  was  on  board  the  fleet  Spam- 
that  went  to  meet  them  on  the  sea.  The  "  Invincible  Armada  "  soon 
ceased  to  terrify  England,  and  though  Philip  of  Spain,  when  he  learned 
of  its  dispersion  and  partial  destruction,  swore  he  would  waste  his 
crown  to  the  value  of  a  wax  candle  but  he  would  drive  Elizabeth  from 
the  throne  he  claimed  as  his  own,1  Drake  was  heard  of  ere  the  year 
was  over  harrying  the  Spaniards  again  on  their  own  coasts.  White, 
meanwhile,  succeeded  in  getting  off  in  April,  1588,  to  the  relief  of  the 
colony  with  two  vessels  and  fifteen  new  planters.  But  they  went  no 
further  than  a  few  leagues  north  of  the  Madeira  Islands,  where,  in  an 
encounter  with  the  Spaniards,  so  many  of  the  men  were  wounded  and 
the  pinnaces  so  disabled  that  they  were  compelled  to  return  to  Eng 
land.2  It  had  been  first  proposed  to  send  a  larger  expedition  under 
Sir  Richard  Grenville,  but  the  ship  was  stopped  by  Order  of  Council, 
and  Grenville  himself  ordered  for  service  against  the  Armada.  It  was 
only  by  importunity  that  White  was  allowed  to  sail  with  these  two 
small  pinnaces,  and  it  was  not  till  1590  that  he  was  permitted  to  make 
another  attempt  to  get  back  to  his  colony. 

In  February  of  that  year,  hearing  that  three  ships  belonging  to  a 
London  merchant  were  ready  for  sea  on  a  voyage  to  the  West  Whiteg0eS 
Indies,  but  detained  by  general  Order  of  Council,  he  procured  o°  t£e  coi-6* 
their  release  through  the  influence  of  Raleigh.     The  condi-  ony"  1590> 
tion  was  that  they  should  carry  a  reasonable  number  of  passengers 
and  land  them  in  Virginia ;  but  this  was  fulfilled  only  so  far  as  to  take 
White  alone.     They  sailed  in  March  ;  spent  four  months  in  a  cruise 
against  the  Spaniards  among  the  West  India  Islands,  capturing  some 
prizes,  and  arrived  at  Wocokon  on  the  9th  of  August. 

Six  days  later  the  ships  anchored  in  Hatorask  harbor,  having  spent 
one  night  on  the  way  off  the  Island  of  Croatoan.  At  Hatorask  White 
was  cheered  with  the  sight  of  a  great  smoke  rising  in  the  direction  of 

1  Rapin's  History  of  England,  vol.  ix. 

2  See  the  first  edition  of  Hakluyt,  of  1589,  p.  771.     The  voyage  is  not  mentioned  in  the 
second  edition  of  1600,  which  contains  White's  narrative  of  his  visit  to  Roanoke  in  1590. 


254  ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT   SETTLEMENT.         [CHAP.  X. 

Roanoke  Island,  and  the  next  morning  salutes  were  fired  at  proper  in 
tervals  to  let  the  colonists  know  of  the  arrival  of  their  countrymen. 
Boats  put  off  for  the  island,  but  before  they  reached  it  another  column 
of  smoke  in  another  direction  raised  fresh  hopes.  This  they  steered 
for,  but  having  consumed  the  day  in  reaching  the  place  where  it  seemed 
to  rise  it  proved  a  delusion.  Neither  men  nor  signs  of  any  habitation 
were  found. 

A  disaster  the  next  day  well  nigh  put  an  end  to  all  further  attempts 
to  reach  Roanoke.  The  boats  were  sent  ashore  at  Hatorask  for  water ; 
the  surf  was  heavy  in  the  inlet,  one  of  the  boats  was  upset,  and  two 
of  the  captains  of  the  ships  and  five  others  were  drowned.  So  dis 
heartened  were  the  sailors  at  this  mishap  that  they  refused  at  first  to 
go  on,  and  this  determination  was  with  difficulty  overcome  by  the  will 
and  authority  of  White  and  the  remaining  captain.  It  was  night  be 
fore  they  reached  Roanoke  and  approached  the  spot  where  White  ex 
pected  to  find  his  friends.  Glimmering  through  the  trees  they  saw 
the  light  of  a  fire,  and  for  a  moment  their  hopes  were  kindled 

Search  for  *  .  . 

white's  coi-  into  enthusiasm.  Approaching  it  along  the  shore  the  notes 
of  a  trumpet-call  from  the  boats  rang  clear  and  shrill  through 
the  silent  woods  ;  the  sailors  sung  out  in  cheering  tones  the  familiar 
words  of  English  songs  which  would  have  so  stirred  the  blood  of  any 
listening  Englishmen  long  exiled  from  home.  But  there  was  no 
answer.  The  light  of  the  distant  fire  still  flickered  above  the  dim  line 
of  the  forest ;  but  out  of  the  darkness  came  no  friendly  shout  of  men, 
no  woman's  glad  cry  of  joy  and  welcome. 

They  landed  at  day-break  ;  the  fire  they  had  seen  was  from  burn 
ing  grass  and  rotting  trees,  kindled,  no  doubt,  by  the  Indians  whose 
fresh  foot-prints  were  found  in  the  sand.  Pushing  through  the  woods 
toward  the  spot  where  White  had  left  his  colony  three  years  before, 
they  saw  the  letters  C  R  O,  carved  upon  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  upon  the 
brow  of  a  hill.  Pausing  to  consider  what  this  might  mean,  White 
remembered  that  when  he  left  the  colony  it  was  proposed  that  the 
people  should  remove  to  the  main  land,  and  that  wherever  they  went 
the  name  of  the  place  should  be  left  behind  them  here  upon  trees  or 
door-posts.  It  was  further  understood  that  should  any  misfortune  have 
overtaken  them,  they  should  carve  beneath  the  name  a  cross.  Here 
then  was  the  guide,  if  CRO  meant  Croatoan,  to  the  place  whither  the 
colony  had  removed,  though  it  was  to  an  outer  island  rather  than  to 
the  main.  But  to  the  anxious  father  and  governor  there  was  this  en 
couragement,  —  the  sign  of  the  cross  was  wanting. 

Again  they  pushed  on  after  a  brief  consultation  upon  the  "  faire 
Romane  letters  curiously  carved,"  which  White  had  thus  explained.  It 
was  not  far  to  the  deserted  post,  still  surrounded  with  its  palisades. 


1590.]  THE   LOST   COLONY.  255 

Here  all  doubts  were  removed  :  at  the  entrance,  upon  one  of  the  largest 
of  the  trees  from  which  the  bark  had  been  stripped,  was  The  deserted 
carved  in  capital  letters,  the  word  CROATOAN  in  full,  and  fort- 
still  without  the  cross.  Within  the  palisades  the  houses  were  gone, 
but  scattered  about  were  bars  of  iron  and  pigs  of  lead,  some  large  guns 
with  their  balls  —  "  fowlers  "  and  "  sacker  shot,"  they  were  called,  — 
and  other  things  too  heavy  for  a  hasty  removal,  all  overgrown  with 
grass  and  weeds.  In  a  trench  not  far  off  were  found  some  chests 
where  they  had  been  buried  by  the  colonists  and  dug  up  afterward 
by  the  Indians  ;  among  these  were  three  belonging  to  White,  but  all 
had  been  rifled  ;  books  were  torn  out  of  their  covers,  the  frames  of  pic 
tures  and  of  maps  were  rotten  with  dampness,  and  a  suit  of  armor  was 
almost  eaten  up  with  rust.  "  Although  it  much  grieved  me,"  says 
White,  "  to  see  such  spoyle  of  my  goods,  yet  on  the  other  side  I  greatly 
joyed  that  I  had  safely  found  a  certaine  token  of  their  [the  colonists] 
safe  being  at  Croatoan,  which  is  the  place  where  Manteo  was  borne, 
and  the  Savages  of  the  Island  our  friends." 

It  was  his  only  consolation  —  if  he  really  believed  that  his  friends, 
among  whom  was  his  daughter,  had  found  any  such  refuge. 
The  boats  had  hardly  regained  the  ships  at  Hatorask  when   white's 

J         *-  x  .  search  for 

a  gale  of  wind  with  a  heavy  sea  set  in,  and  in  attempting  to  the  missing 
get  under  way  one  of  the  ships  lost  her  anchors  and  was  near 
going  ashore.  The  water  casks,  which  had  been  taken  to  the  land  to 
be  filled,  could  not  be  brought  off  ;  provisions  were  short,  the  sailors 
were  despondent  and  impatient,  and  it  was  determined  to  abandon  all 
attempts  to  go  to  Croatoan  in  further  search  of  the  colony,  but  to  sail 
at  once  to  the  West  Indies  and  recruit.  White  was  only  a  passenger, 
and  could  probably  do  nothing  to  change  this  determination,  though 
his  friends,  if  still  alive,  were  not  many  miles  distant.  He  may, 
indeed,  have  been  doubtful  if  they  were  still  alive,  for  the  ships  on 
their  arrival  on  the  coast  had  stopped  at  Wocokon,  had  sailed  along 
the  shores  of  Croatoan,  and  anchored  for  a  night  off  the  north  end  of 
the  island.  Had  there  been  any  survivors  of  the  colonists  there,  they 
could  hardly  have  failed,  on  the  look-out  as  they  would  always  have 
been  for  succor,  to  see  the  passing  vessels  and  have  made  their  presence 
known  by  signals  of  some  sort.  But  no  signs  had  been  seen  of  living 
men  ;  no  columns  of  smoke  curled  up  above  the  trees  ;  no  flags  of 
distress  were  descried  ;  no  friendly  Indians  beckoned  them  to  land  ; 
no  sound  of  gun  or  shout  broke  the  silence  of  the  wilderness.  At 
Roanoke  alone,  in  the  one  word  Croatoan  carved  upon  the  trees, 
and  in  the  crumbling  vestiges  of  the  colony,  half  buried  in  the  rank 
growth  of  two  or  three  summers,  were  there  any  evidences  that  Eng 
lishmen  had  ever  been  there  —  tokens,  also,  that  they  had  perished. 


256  ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS   AT   SETTLEMENT.       [CHAP.  X. 

That  such  was  White's  conviction  —  that  he  believed  his  daughter 
and  her  children,  and  all  the  rest  whom  he  had  led  to  this  distant  land, 
had  fallen  victims  to  the  vengeance  of  the  natives  —  is  the  most  char 
itable  way  of  accounting  for  the  readiness  with  which  he  seems  to 
have  acceded  to  the  proposal  to  sail  for  the  West  Indies.  It  was, 
indeed,  suggested  that  they  should  return  to  Virginia,  after  taking  on 
board  a  fresh  stock  of  water  and  provisions  ;  but  that  could  only  have 
been  a  pretext,  for  as  Croatoan  was  directly  in  their  course  a  delay  of 
half  a  day  would  have  sufficed  to  ascertain  whether  there  were  any 
Englishmen  alive  upon  the  island.  "I  leave  off," — said  White,  in  a 
letter  to  Hakluyt,  narrating  the  details  of  this  voyage,  —  "I  leave  off 
from  prosecuting  that  whereunto  I  would  to  God  my  wealth  were  an 
swerable  to  my  will."  Others  did  not  leave  off,  no  doubt  sincerely  be 
lieving  what  with  White  may  have  been  only  a  desperate  hope,  that 
the  unhappy  planters  were  not  all  exterminated.  Sir  Walter  Raleigh 
seems  never  to  have  neglected  any  chance  of  finding  his  lost  colony, 
but  excuses  were  never  wanting  for  not  making  a  thorough  search  on 
the  part  of  those  whom  he  engaged  to  undertake  it. 

In  1602,  that  no  divided  interest  should  interfere  with  a  thorough 
prosecution  of  the  object  of  the  voyage,  he  bought  a  vessel  and  hired  a 
Raleigh  crew  for  this  one  purpose.  The  ship  was  commanded  by 
urflvifcTto  Samuel  Mace,  who  twice  before  had  been  in  Virginia,  "  a 
Croatoan.  sufficient  mariner,  and  an  honest,  sober  man."  But  he,  like 
the  rest,  found  something  else  to  do  than  to  search  for  his  countrymen. 
Did  he  think  it  a  fool's  errand  ?  The  honest  man  and  sufficient  mari 
ner  spent  a  month  on  the  coast,  forty  leagues  southwest  of  Hatteras, 
perhaps  at  the  mouth  of  Cape  Fear  River,  trafficking  with  the  Indians, 
making  no  attempt  to  reach  Croatoan,  on  the  standing  pretext  of  stress 
of  weather  and  loss  of  ground  tackle.1  There  was  an  evident  unwil 
lingness  in  England  to  acknowledge  publicly  that  so  cruel  a  calamity 
as  the  total  destruction  of  so  many  men  and  women  could  have  be 
fallen  an  attempt  to  colonize  Virginia ;  Raleigh  himself  was  reluctant 
to  give  up  —  if  he  ever  gave  up  —  his  firm  persuasion  that  they  had 
not  all  perished  ;  but  as  those  who  were  sent  to  their  relief  made  little 
or  no  effort  to  find  them,  it  is  charitable  to  suppose  that  though  they 
accepted  his  service  they  had  no  faith  in  his  opinion. 

That  the  colonists  were  all  massacred  soon  after  White  left  them, 

strachey's      has  been  the  common    belief   in   later   times ;    but  there   is 

thlTosT6  to    good  reason  for  doubting  if  that  were  the  fact.     There  was 

clearly  a  conviction   prevalent  in  the  colony  at  Jamestown, 

twenty  years  afterward,  that  some  of  the  Roanoke  people  had  es- 

1  Purchas,  vol.  iv. ;  Strachey's  Historic  of  Travaile  into  Virginia,  p.  134.  The  statement 
in  Purchas  is  that  Raleigh  had  sent  succor  to  those  left  in  Virginia  in  1587,  "five  sev 
eral  times  at  his  own  charges,"  hef'ore  he  sent  Mace. 


1602.]  THE   LOST   COLONY.  257 

caped  destruction,  and  might  be  even  then  surviving.1  Strachey 
refers  to  them  again  and  again,  and  in  a  way  that  conveys  the  impres 
sion  he  is  speaking  of  a  fact  he  knows  will  not  be  questioned.  In 
describing  the  country  of  the  Upper  Potomac,  he  says  that  in  the  high 
land  "  to  the  so' ward  "  the  people  of  Peccarecamek  and  Ochanahoen 
have,  according  to  the  report  of  an  Indian,  houses  of  stone,  which 
they  were  taught  to  build  "  by  those  Englishe  whoe  escaped  the 
slaughter  at  Roanoak,"  and  that  a  certain  chief  had  "  preserved  seven 
of  the  English  alive — fower  men,  two  boyes,  and  one  yonge  mayde, 
who  escaped  and  fled  up  the  river  Chanoke,  [probably  the  Chowan,] 
to  beat  his  copper."  Of  White's  last  visit  to  Roanoke,  when  he  found 
the  indication  that  should  have  led  him  to  Croatoan,  he  also  says  : 
"  Howbeit,  Captaine  White  sought  them  no  further,  but  missing  them 
there,  and  his  company  havinge  other  practises,  and  which  those  tymes 
afforded,  they  returned  covetous  of  some  good  successe  upon  the  Span 
ish  fleete  to  returne  that  yeare  from  Mexico  and  the  Indies,  —  neglect 
ing  thus  these  unfortunate  and  betrayed  people,  of  whose  end  you 
shall  yet  hereafter  read  in  due  place  in  this  decade." 

But  this  story,  if  he  ever  wrote  it,  has  not  yet  been  recovered. 
What  it  may  have  been  we  can  only  infer  from  expressions  like  these 
scattered  through  "  The  Historie  of  Travaille."  "  He  [Powhatan] 
doth  often  send  unto  us  to  temporise  with  us,  awayting  perhapps  a  fit 
opportunity  (inflamed  by  his  furious  and  bloudy  priests)  to  offer  us  a 
tast  of  the  same  cuppe  which  he  made  our  poore  countrymen  drinck  of 
at  Roanoak."  The  King  of  England,  it  is  said  elsewhere,  "  hath  bene 
acquainted  that  the  men,  women,  and  childrene  of  the  first  plantation 
at  Roanoak  were  by  practise  and  comandement  of  Powhatan  (he  him 
self  perswaded  therunto  by  his  priests,)  miserably  slaughtered  with 
out  any  offence  given  him,  either  by  the  first  planted  (who  twenty 
and  od  yeares  had  peaceably  lyved  intermixt  with  those  salvages,  and 
were  out  of  his  territory,)  or  by  those  who  now  are  come."  And 
again :  "  Powhatan  hath  slaughtered  so  many  of  our  nation  without 
offence  given,  and  such  as  were  seated  far  from  him,  and  in  the  terri 
tory  of  those  weroance  [chiefs]  which  did  in  no  sort  depend  on  him 
or  acknowledge  him." 

Assuming  that  Strachey  was  a  trustworthy  reporter  —  and  of  that 
there  is  no  question  —  of  what  he  saw  and  heard  in  Virginia,  we  con 
clude  it  was  the  belief  at  Jamestown  that  there  were  some  survivors 

1  The  Historie  of  Travaile  into  Virginia  Britannia,  by  William  Strachey,  the  first  secre 
tary  of  the  colony  at  Jamestown,  though  written  at  an  early  period  of  the  settlement,  was 
not  published  till  1849,  and  the  new  light  he  sheds  upon  this  subject  is  so  recent  that  it  has 
not,  we  believe,  been  noticed  anywhere  except  by  the  Rev.  E.  E.  Hale,  in  vol.  iv.  of  the 
Collections  of  the  American  Antiquarian  Society. 


258  ENGLISH  ATTEMPTS  AT    SETTLEMENT.         [CHAP.  X. 

of  White's  colony,  and  that    these  Powhatan,  or  rather  his    priests, 

caused  to  be  put  to  death  after  the  settlement  of  the  English  at  that 

place.     Understanding  this,  we  are  better  able  to  comprehend  some 

allusions   in  the    Smith  histories  which,  without   the  light 

Allusions  in.  in  i  i  IITT  t     •  i  •       i  i        i 

smith's  his-    given  by  Strachev,  have  seemed  blind  and  inexplicable,  but 

tones  to  J  is  *•  f  a*.        1         '  4-1          ^1 

these  coio-  are  clearly  a  confirmation  or  Stracney  s  story  tliat  there  were 
some  survivors,  in  1606,  of  the  Roanoke  people.  Thus,  in 
"  The  True  Relation," 1  the  first  book  by  Captain  Smith  on  Virginia, 
he  says,  in  relating  an  interview  with  the  Emperor  Powhatan :  "  What 
he  knew  of  the  dominions  he  spared  not  to  acquaint  me  with,  as 
of  certaine  men  cloathed  at  a  place  called  Ocanahonan,  cloathed  like 
me."  And  again  he  says  :  "  The  people  clothed  at  Ocamahowan,  he 
[Powhatan]  alsoe  confirmed."2  The  allusion  in  both  cases  can  only 
be  to  the  lost  colonists.  And  in  the  work  known  as  his  "  Generall  His- 
torie,"  published  fifteen  years  afterward,  is  this  passage :  "How  or  why 
Captaine  Newport  obtained  such  private  commission  as  not  to  return 
without  a  lumpe  of  gold,  a  certaintie  of  the  South  Sea,  or  one  of  the 
lost  company  sent  out  by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  I  know  not."  3  That 
one  of  the  objects  of  an  expedition  into  the  interior  was  to  succor  some 
of  the  survivors  of  the  Roanoke  colony,  and  because  some  of  those 
unhappy  men  and  women  lived  to  so  late  a  period  without  being  re 
leased  by  their  friends  in  England,  is  why,  probably,  Strachey  speaks 
of  them  as  being  betrayed. 

Raleigh's  patent  of  1584  was  renewed  from  time  to  time,  though  as 
early  as  1589  he  hoped  that  he  had  induced  others  to  carry  on  the  work 
which  he  had  begun.  In  those  first  years  of  enthusiasm,  he  had  ex 
pended  it  is  said,  forty  thousand  pounds  sterling  in  his  several  expedi 
tions,4  and  he  then  enlarged  on  behalf  of  Thomas  Smith  and  others, 
merchants  of  London,  the  charter  of  "  The  City  of  Raleigh  "  under 
which  White  and  his  associates  were  incorporated.5  But  this  new 
company  did  nothing,  and  Raleigh's  efforts  were  limited  to  the 

Raleigh's  in-  J  . 

terest  in  his   attempt  to  convey  help  to  those  colonists  in  whose  total  de- 

colony 

struction  he  persistently  refused  to  believe,  down  to  the  time 
when  he  sent  Mace,  in  1602.     Of  that  voyage  we  have  some  further 

1  A  True  Relation  of  Virginia.     By  Captain   John    Smith.     Edited  by   Charles   Deane, 
Boston,  1866,  p.  28. 

2  Ibid.  p.  37.     We  follow  the  punctuation  of  the  passage  in  accordance  with  Mr.  Dcane's 
suggestion,  by  which  alone  can  it  have  any  meaning. 

8  The  Voyages  and  Discoveries  of  Captain  John  Smith,  vol.  i.,  p.  120.     Richmond  edition. 

4  Oldys,  in  his  Life  of  Raleigh,  vol.  i.,  p.  117,  makes  this  statement  on  the  authority  of  a 
scarce  pamphlet  which  he  describes  as  "  a  brief  relation  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  troubles." 
The  sum  named  is  probably  exaggerated. 

5  The  indenture  between  Raleigh  and  Smith  has  sometimes  been  supposed  to  be  a  con 
veyance  of  the  patent  of  1584,  from  Raleigh  to  Smith  and  others.     It  was  only  to  include 
them,  with  enlarged  privileges,  in  "  the  City  of  Raleigh  "  charter. 


1602.]  THE   LOST   COLONY.  259 

account  in  a  letter  from  Raleigh,  to  Secretary  Sir  Robert  Cecil,  written 
in  August  of  that  year.  "  I  wrote  unto  you,"  he  says,  "  in  my  last 
that  I  was  gonn  to  Weymouth  to  speake  with  a  pinnes  of  myne  arived 
from  Virginia."  Mace  was  from  Weymouth,  had  sailed  in  March  of 
that  year  for  Virginia,  and  as  he  had  spent  a  month  on  the  coast  to 
trade  with  the  Indians,  and  to  load  his  vessel  with  sassafras,  he 
would  be  back  in  Weymouth  in  three  or  four  months.  His  landfall 
was  "forty  leagues  to  the  south  westward  of  Hatteras."  l 

Raleigh's  pinnace  was  also  loaded,  he  says,  with  "  sarsephraze,"  and 
her  landfall  was  "  forty  leagues  to  the  west  of  it,"  — i.  e.  Virginia,  — 
and  it  was  for  that  reason  that  the  captain  did  not  "  spake  with  the 
peopell  "  — the  colonists  at  Croatoan.  This  letter  was  written  to  Ce 
cil  to  ask  him  to  intercede  with  the  Lord  Admiral  for  the  seizure  of 
sassafras  brought  home  at  the  same  time  by  a  Captain  Gilbert,  who 
also  had  been  on  the  American  coast,  forty  leagues  to  the  east  of 
Roanoke,  because,  says  Raleigh,  "  I  have  a  patent  that  all  shipps  and 
goods  are  confiscate  that  shall  trade  ther  without  my  leve."  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  pinnace  here  referred  to  was  the  one  com 
manded  by  Mace. 

Captain  Gilbert  was  himself  the  bearer  of  this  letter.  He,  said 
Raleigh,  commending  him  to  the  good  offices  of  the  secretary,  • 

"is   my  Lord  Cobham's  man It  is  he  —  by  a  good  letters  on 

*  <f   _  American 

token  —  that  had  the  great  diamonde."  The  allusion  re-  business, 
called  no  doubt  to  Cecil's  mind  some  stirring  adventure,  perhaps  some 
piece  of  rare  good  luck  in  a  fight  with  the  Spaniard,  in  which  Gilbert 
had  been  conspicuous.  But  although  he  was  Lord  Cobham's  man, 
he  was  also,  we  suppose,  a  nephew  of  Raleigh's  and  in  friendly 
relations  with  him,  notwithstanding  this  proposed  seizure  of  his  sassa 
fras.  That,  indeed,  seems  only  to  have  been  what  is  now  called  a  busi 
ness  arrangement,  Gilbert  assenting  to  this  method  of  taking  one  of 
the  cargoes  out  of  the  market  that  the  other  might  command  a  higher 
price.  He  also,  no  doubt,  was  the  Bartholomew  Gilbert  who  had  sailed 
in  April  with  Bartholomew  Gosnold  for  the  coast  of  New  England, 
arriving  home  again  the  latter  part  of  July,  not  long  before  the  date 
of  this  letter. 

"  I  do  sende  both  the  barks  away  againe,"  writes  Raleigh.  Of 
Mace  we  hear  no  more  ;  but  Bartholomew  Gilbert,  it  is  known,  sailed 
for  Virginia,  the  following  spring.2  It  was  partly  a  trading  voyage  to 
the  West  Indies,  but  had  also  another  object  in  which  Raleigh's  will  is 
seen  even  if  we  had  not  his  own  assertion  that  Gilbert  was  to  go 

1  Tracts  appended  to  Brereton.     Mass.  Hist.  Coll. 

2  Purchas,  vol.  iv.,  p.  1556. 


260 


ENGLISH   ATTEMPTS  AT    SETTLEMENT.         [CHAP.  X. 


again,  this  time  with  his  sanction.  The  vessel  took  in  a  cargo  in 
the  West  Indies,  and  on  her  way  homeward  went  up  the  Chesepian 
(Chesapeake)  Bay  to  look  for  the  lost  colony.  The  search  was 
brief  ;  heavy  weather  for  some  days  prevented  a  landing,  till  at  length 
Gilbert  ventured  to  go  on  shore  with  a  boat.  Leaving  this  in  charge 
of  two  boys,  he  with  his  men  started  on  an  expedition  inland.  They 
were  still  in  sight  of  the  lads  they  had  left  behind  when 
a  band  of  Indians  started  from  an  ambush  and  attacked 
them  furiously.  Several  men  were  seen  to  fall,  wounded 
by  arrows  :  the  affrighted  boys  put 
off  hurriedly  to  the  ship,  leaving  the 
captain  and  his  companions  at  the 
mercy  of  the  savages.  Nothing  more 


thoiomew 


Bartholomew  Gilbert's  Death. 

was  heard  of  them,  and  the  ship,  her  crew  reduced  in  numbers, 
the  captain  and  other  officers  gone,  soon  set  sail  and  returned  to 
England. 

With  this  tragic  event  —  the  death  of  another  Gilbert  in  the  cause 
of  American  colonization  —  ends  Raleigh's  connection  with  that  conn' 
try  to  which,  as  he  said  the  year  before,  he  still  held  the  title,  and  of 
which  he  speaks  in  this  letter  to  Cecil  in  these  memorable  words  : 
"  I  shall  yet  live  to  see  it  an  Inglishe  nation."  l 

In  this  same  summer,  when  his  nephew  lay  dead  on  the  beach  of 
Chesapeake  Bay,  the  final  sacrifice  of  Raleigh  on  behalf  of  that 
new  English  nation,  his  patent  expired  by  his  attainder.  On  the 

1  Edwards'  Life  of  Raleiyh,  London,  1868,  vol.  ii.     Letter  ex.     From  the  original  Cecil 
Papers. 


1603.] 


ATTAINDER   OF   RALEIGH. 


261 


charge  of  high  treason,  James  I.  found  in  Sir  John  Popham  —  re 
membered  now  chiefly  for  the  part  he  took  in  the  trial  of  End  of  Ka_ 
Raleigh,  and  for   following   his  example  in   attempting  to  American 
found  a  colony  on  the  North  American  coast  —  a  chief  j  us-  enterPrises- 
tice  base  enough  to  bend  the  law  to  the  will  of  a  tyrannical  master. 


Signature  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 


Signature  of  Sir  Walter  Raieigh. 


Entrance  to  Chesapeake   Bay. 


CHAPTER   XL 


FIRST    ENGLISH    SETTLEMENT   IN   AMERICA. 

GOSNOLD'S  EXPEDITION. — PATENT  GRANTED  TO  LONDON  AND  PLYMOUTH  COMPANIES. 
—  A  COLONY  SETS  OUT  FOR  VIRGINIA.  —  DISCORD  ON  SHIPBOARD.  —  THE  BUILDING 
OF  JAMESTOWN.  —  NEWPORT'S  EXPLORATION  OF  THE  RIVER.  —  GOVERNORSHIP  OF 
EDWARD  WINGFIELD.  —  DISCONTENT  AND  SUFFERING  AMONG  THE  COLONISTS. — 
THE  INDIAN  CHIEF  POWHATAN.  —  ACCOUNTS  OF  SMITH'S  CAPTURE  BY  THE  SAV 
AGES. —  DISCREPANCIES  IN  SMITH'S  OWN  STORY.  —  RETURN  OF  NEWPORT  FROM 
ENGLAND.  —  CORONATION  OF  POWHATAN.  —  SERVICES  OF  SMITH  TO  THE  COLONY.  — 
THE  NEW  CHARTER.  —  EXPEDITION  OF  GATES  AND  SOMERS.  —  THE  TEMPEST  AND 
THE  SHIPWRECK.  —  OPPORTUNE  COMING  OF  LORD  DE  LA  WARRE.  —  CODE  OF  LAWS 
FOR  THE  COLONY.  —  ADMINISTRATION  OF  GATES  AND  DALE.  —  CULTIVATION  OF 
TOBACCO.  —  MARRIAGE  OF  POCAHONTAS.  —  SANDYS  AND  YEARDLEY.  —  THE  COLONY 

FIRMLY   ESTABLISHED. WlIITE   AND   BLACK   SLAVERY.  THE   FlRST   AMERICAN 

LEGISLATURE. 

BARTHOLOMEW  GOSNOLD  sailed  from  Falmouth,  England,  on  the 
25th  of  March,  1602,  in  a  small  vessel  called  the  Concord — Bartholo 
mew  Gilbert  being  his  second  in  command — sent,  not  by  Raleigh,  nor 
going  with  Raleigh's  consent,  but  by  the  Earl  of  Southampton.1  He 

1  The  letter  from  Raleigh  to  Cecil,  referred  to  in  the  previous  chapter,  shows  that  the 
presumption  that  this  voyage  was  made  with  his  consent  (see  Bancroft,  Palfrey,  and  others), 
is  erroneous.  He  asks  that  Gilbert's  "  sarsephrase  "  be  seized,  "  because  I  have  a  patint 
that  all  shipps  and  goods  are  confiscate  that  shall  trade  ther  without  my  leve."  That 
he  had  given  such  leave,  has  hitherto  been  assumed,  because  Brereton  (see  Purchas's  Pil 
grims  and  Mass.  Hist.  Coll.,  vol.  viii.,  Third  Series),  addresses  his  narrative  of  the  voyage  to 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh.  Brereton's  own  words,  however,  make  it  plain  that  he  did  so  only  as  a 
matter  of  courtesy. 


1602.] 


GOSNOLD'S   EXPEDITION. 


263 


took  with  him  thirty-two  persons,  of  whom  twenty  were  to  remain 
and  found  a  colony  somewhere  on  the  northern  coast  of  Vir-  voyage  of 
ginia,  as  the  whole  country  was  then  called,  from  the  thirty-   Barthol°- 


mew  Gos- 
nold.    1602. 


fourth  to  the  forty-fifth  parallel  of  latitude.  His  purpose  was 
to  go  by  a  direct  northwest  course,  avoiding  the  usual  circuitous  route 
by  the  Canaries  and  the  West  India  Islands ;  but  contrary  winds 
drove  him  southward- to  one  of  the  Azores,  whence  he  steered  nearly 
due  west,  arriving  on  the  coast  of  New  England  at  about  40°  of 
latitude,  on  the  14th  of  May. 

At  a  point  which  he  called  Savage  Rock,  not  far,  probably,  from 
Cape  Ann,  if  not  the  Cape  itself,  the  Concord  was  boarded  by  a  party 
of  Indians  in  a  Biscay  shallop,  carrying  both  sails  and  oars  ;  their  lead 
er,  and  one  or  two  others,  were  partially  clothed  in  European  garments, 
which,  as  well  as  the  boat,  they  had  obtained  from  Biscay  fishermen  ; 
nor  was  this  the  only  evidence  of  frequent  intercourse  with  such  visit 
ors,  for  it  is  said,  "  they  spoke  divers  Christian  words,  and  seemed  to 
understand  more  than  we,  for  want  of  language,  could  comprehend."  l 
Finding  at  this  place  no  good  harbor,  they  stood  southward,  crossed 
Massachusetts  Bay,  and  the  next  morning  dropped  anchor,  within  a 
league  from  the  shore,  under  the  lea  of  a  great  promontory. 


Provincetown. 


On  this  breezy  point,  jutting  out  into  the  Atlantic,  which  a  voyager 
along  the  coast  of  the  United  States  can  hardly  escape  hitting,  either 
in  fair  weather  or  foul,  stands  to-day  the  picturesque  village  of  Prov 
incetown,  half  buried  always  in  sand,  and  at  the  proper  season  com- 
1  The  Relation  of  Captain  Gosnold's  Voyage,  by  Gabriel  Archer,  in  Purchas,  vol.  iv. 


264 


FIRST   ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT   IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 


pletely  covered  over  with  drying  cod-fish.  Gosnold  and  his  people  at 
first  called  this  promontory  Shoal  Hope,  but  presently  changed  the 
name  to  Cape  Cod.  Champlain  called  it  Cap  Blanc  (Cape  White), 
four  years  later,  because  of  the  aspect  which  its  sands  gave  it ; l  and 
in  1614  Captain  John  Smith  named  it  Cape  James  ;  but  the  name 
Cape  Cod  it  has  never  lost.  The  captain  and  some  of  his  companions 
landed,  and  found  pease,  strawberries,  and  whortleberries,  as  yet  un 
ripe  ;  the  woods  were  cypress,  birch,  witch-hazel,  and  beech  —  products 
which  the  visitor  to  the  extremity  of  Cape  Cod  will  now  hardly  find, 
by  the  most  diligent  search. 

Doubling  the  headland,  they  sailed  for  six  days  along  the  outer  coast 

of  the  cape,  —  "  the  back  side  "  as  it  is  now  called,  —  which 

past  cape       the  Northmen,  it  is  supposed,  had  discovered  six  hundred 

years  before,  and  named  Wonder-strands.   Certain  points  now 

known  as  dangerous  shoals,  but  which  were  then  peninsulas  of  firm 

land,  the  Concord's  crew 
called  Tucker's  Terror  and 
Gilbert's  Point,  from  two 
of  their  officers.  The  fish 
ing  was  so  good,  —  better, 
they  thought,  than  off  the 
banks  of  Newfoundland,  — 
that  they  "  pestered  "  their 
ship  with  the  quantity  of 
cod  they  took  each  day ;  in 
land  the  country  seemed 
covered  with  grass  and  well 
wooded,  and  to  be  very 
populous.  A  few  of  the 
natives  came  alongside  in 
their  birch  canoes,  others 
ran  along  the  beaches  "  ad 
miring"  the  strangers;  the 
pipes  of  those  who  boarded 
the  ship,  it  was  observed, 
were  "  steeled  with  copper," 
and  one  of  these  Indians 

Map  of  Cape  Cod.  i  ,     i     ,  n    ,  i      , 

wore  a  breastplate  of  that 
metal  a  foot  in  length  and  half  a  foot  in  breadth. 

Crossing  the  Vineyard  Sound,  they  came  "  amongst  many  fail- 
islands,"  on  one  of  which  they  landed.  It  was  full  of  woods  and 
fruit-bearing  bushes,  with  such  an  incredible  store  of  vines  running 

1    Voyages  du  Sieur  de  Champlain. 


1602.]  GOSNOLD'S   EXPEDITION.  265 

upon  every  tree,  that  they  could  not  go   for  treading  upon  them. 
It  is  the  Northmen's  story  over  again.     "  We  will  call  it  Vinland," 
said  Leif  the  Lucky,  of  the  country  he  found,  probably  in  these  same 
waters.     To  the  island  on  which  they  first  landed,  Gosnold  and  his 
people  gave  the  name  of  Martha's  Vineyard.1     This,  there  is  little 
doubt,  is  now  known  as  No  Man's  Land,  the  name  of  Martha's  Vine 
yard  being  afterward  transferred  to  the  larger  island  north  of  it.    Here 
they  did  not  go  ashore,  but  doubling  its  southwest  extremity,  calling 
it  Dover  Cliff  as  they  passed,  sailed  into  Buzzard's  Bay.     It  seemed 
to  them  one  of  the  "  stateliest  "  of  Sounds,  and  worthy  to  Decidesto 
be  called  Gosnold's  Hope.     On  an  island  now  known  by  its  Eifz^btth'* 
Indian  name  of  Cuttyhunk,2  but  which  Gosnold  called  Eliz-  Ialand- 
abeth,  —  the  designation  now  of  that  whole  group  of  which  Cutty- 
hunk  is  the  outermost,  —  it  was  determined  to  plant  the  colony. 

The  soil  was  "  fat  and  lusty."  The  seed  of  various  grains,  planted 
as  an  experiment,  sprung  up  in  fourteen  days  to  a  height  of  from 
six  to  nine  inches.  Indeed,  on  all  the  coast,  no  more  enticing  place 
could  be  found  than  this  lovely  island,  with  its  southern  side  to  the 
sea,  the  Gulf  Stream  winding  in  near  enough  to  warm  the  tides  that 
washed  its  shores.  In  a  lake  two  or  three  miles  in  circuit,  one  end  of 
it  only  a  few  yards  from  the  outer  beach,  was  a  rocky  islet  —  an  island 
within  an  island  —  and  on  this  they  determined  to  build  a  fort.  The 
larger  part  of  the  company  at  once  set  to  work,  and  for  the  next  three 
weeks  were  busy  on  a  place  of  habitation  and  defence,  while  a  few, 
"  and  those  but  easy  laborers,"  employed  themselves  in  gathering 
sassafras  —  few,  because,  adds  Captain  Gosnold,  in  a  letter  to  hi* 
father,3  "  We  were  informed  before  our  going  forth,  that  a  ton  (of 
sassafras)  was  enough  to  cloy  England."  What  became  of  this  cargo, 
we  learn  from  Raleigh's  letter  to  Secretary  Cecil. 

The  Indians  were  frequent  visitors,  bringing  furs,  wampum,  to 
bacco  — "  which  they  drink  (smoke)  green,  but  dried  into  powder, 
very  strong  and  pleasant"  —  and  such  provision  as  they  had  for 
traffic.  Among  them,  as  among  the  natives  of  the  Cape,  copper  was- 
in  common  use  as  an  ornament,  and  by  signs  they  made  known  that 
they  dug  it  out  of  the  ground,  which  gave  great  hope  to  the  English 
of  mines  not  far  distant.  Gosnold,  with  some  of  his  companions, 

1  Or  Martin's  Vineyard,  as  it  is  often  written  by  early  writers.     Captain  Pring,  who 
made  essentially  the  same  voyage  the  next  year,  was  on  board  the  Concord.     His  name  was 
Martin,  and  it  may  have  been  given  to  the  island  in  his  honor,  suggests  Belknap,  as  the 
names  of  others  of  this  ship's  company  were  used  to  designate  other  places  —  as  Tucker's- 
Terror,  Gilbert's  Point,  Gosnold's  Hope,  Hill's  Hap. 

2  "  A  contraction  of  Poo-cut-oh-hunk-un-nok,  which  signifies  a  thing  that  lies  out  of  th& 
water."  —  Belknap' s  American  Biography,  vol.  ii.,  p.  114. 

3  Master  Bartholomew  Gosnold's  letter  to  his  father,  touching  his  first  voyage  to  Vir 
ginia.     See  Purchas  and  Mass.  Hist.  Coll. 


266  FIRST   ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT  .IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XL 

visited  other  islands  of  the  group,  and  explored  the  main  in  the  di 
rection  of  the  site  of  the  present  town  of  New  Bedford,  and  found  it 
to  be  "the  goodliest  continent  that  ever  we  saw,  promising  more  by 
far  than  we  did  expect ;  for  it  is  replenished  with  fair  fields,  and  in 
them  fragrant  flowers,  also  meadows,  and  hedged  in  with  stately 
groves,  being  furnished  also  with  pleasant  brooks,  and  beautified  with 
two  main  rivers." l  The  natives  were,  on  the  whole,  not  unfriendly  ; 
and  in  a  place  so  pleasant,  with  so  much  that  was  encouraging,  this 
might  have  been  the  first  English  colony  on  the  American  coast,  had 
the  Concord  been  better  provided. 

But  when   the  time  came  for  her  return,  it  was  found  that  only 

enough  stores  could  be  spared  to  sustain  for  six  weeks  at  most  those  who 

should  remain.     There  was  little  reason  to  hope  that  they 

Abandon-  .,,.  .  ,  ,'  .. 

ment  of  the  might  live  upon  the  country,  and  they  had  made  no  provision 

enterprise.  J  i  i          •  rrn 

for  a  crop  by  planting.  I  he  uncertainty  as  to  how  soon 
succor  might  reach  them  from  home,  and  the  doubt  whether  the 
Indians  would  leave  them  unmolested,  counselled  prudence,  and  they 
wisely  resolved  that  none  should  be  left  behind.  On  the  18th  of 
June  they  sailed  for  England,  and  on  the  23d  of  July  arrived  off 
Exmouth.  When  four  days  afterward  they  anchored  in  Portsmouth 
Harbor,  "  we  had  not,"  said  Gosnold,  in  the  letter  to  his  father,  "  one 
cake  of  bread,  nor  any  drink  but  a  little  vinegar,  left." 

Indirectly  this  voyage  of  Gosnold's  was  not  without  important  re 
sults,  though  a  failure  in  its  immediate  purpose.  New  England  thus 
just  missed  of  being  the  site  of  the  first  settled  colony,  but  attention 
was  turned  to  these  Northern  coasts,  never  to  be  again  relaxed  for  any 
long  period.  The  immediate  interest  aroused  was  enough  to  send  out 
in  the  course  of  the  next  two  or  three  years,  several  expeditions  for 
trade  with  the  Indians. 

Martin  Pring,  who  was  with  Gosnold  in  the  Concord,  was  fitted  out 

by  some  Bristol  merchants  in  the  spring  of  1603,  with  two 
Pring-s  voy-  vessels,  one  of  fifty  tons,  the  other  of  twenty-six  only,  with 

which  he  ran  along  the  coast  of  Maine,  stopping  long  enough 
in  Casco  Bay  to  find  the  fishing  better  than  off  Newfoundland  ;  look 
ing  into  the  mouth  of  the  Kennebunk,  the  York,  and  the  Piscataqua 
rivers,  cruising  with  delight  among  the  many  islands  along  that  shore. 
Then  following  Gosnold's  track  from  "  Savage  Rock  "  to  Buzzard's 
Bay,  trading  with  Indians  wherever  he  could  find  them,  he  was  back 
again  in  England,  his  two  vessels  well  laden,  within  six  months.  Wey- 
mouth,  whom  the  Earl  of  Southampton  and  Lord  Arundel  sent  out 
two  years  later,  was  bent  rather  upon  discovery  than  trade.  But 
these  voyages  were  the  direct  consequence  of  that  of  Gosnold  ;  the 

1  Archer's  Relation. 


1606.]  PATENT   TO   THE  VIRGINIA  COMPANIES.  267 

shorter  route  he  opened  by  steering  directly  westward  instead  of  the 
circuitous  course  followed  by  vessels  going  to  Virginia  for  the  previous 
twenty  years,  and  the  report  of  a  rich  and  productive  country,  and  a 
salubrious  climate,  at  least  in  the  summer  months,  on  the  Northern 
coast,  promised  a  new  field  for  English  enterprise. 

Gosnold  himself  was  full  of  zeal  and  energy.  The  failure  to 
plant  a  colony  on  Elizabeth  Island  did  not  in  the  least  discourage 
him,  and  the  few  weeks  spent  in  that  region  assured  him  of  the  possi 
bility  of  successful  colonization  anywhere  along  the  coast  under  better 
auspices.  He  inspired  men  of  influence  and  wealth  with  something 
of  his  own  enthusiasm.  The  merchants  of  London,  Bristol,  and  Plym 
outh  considered  the  subject  in  its  commercial  aspect,  and  that  seemed 
full  of  promise ;  but  there  were  many  others  who  saw  it  in  a  more 
comprehensive  light.  Chief  among  these  was  Richard  Hakluyt,  a 
London  clergyman,  whose  diligence  as  an  author  bore  witness  to  the 
deep  interest  he  felt  in  discovery  in  the  New  World,  and  the  import 
ance  he  believed  the  possession  of  its  Northern  portion  to  be  to  Eng 
land.  The  result  of  the  labors  of  such  men  was  the  formation  of  an 
association  composed  of  some  of  the  most  influential  and  respectable 
persons  in  the  kingdom,  and  which  determined  beyond  a  doubt  the 
future  of  North  America. 

Letters-patent  were  issued  in  April,  1606,  to  Sir  George  Somers, 
Richard  Hakluyt,  Edward  Maria  Wingfield,  and  others  who  Patentto 
should  be  joined  to  them,  by  which  was  granted  all  the  c^mpwSie"'* 
territority  on  the  American  coast,  between  34°  and  45°,  l 
and  the  islands  within  a  hundred  miles.  It  was  required  that  two 
companies  be  formed,  one  to  be  called  the  first,  or  Southern  Colony  ; 
the  other,  the  second,  or  Northern  Colony.  The  jurisdiction  of 
the  Southern  colony,  whose  council  was  chiefly  composed  of  resi 
dents  of  London  and  came  therefore  to  be  known  as  the  London 
Company,  extended  from  Cape  Fear  to  the  eastern  end  of  Long 
Island,  from  34°  to  41°  ;  the  other  was  called  the  Plymouth  Com 
pany,  as  its  council  was  appointed  from  Plymouth  and  its  vicinity ;  its 
limits  overlapped  those  of  the  other,  extending  from  38°  to  45°,  or 
from  about  the  latitude  of  Delaware  Bay  to  Halifax,  Nova  Scotia. 

Each  colony  was  to  be  governed  by  a  resident  council  of  thirteen,  to 
be  appointed  by  the  king,  with  power  to  choose  a  president,  Government 
who  should  not  be  a  clergyman,  from  their  own  body,  and  ^hed^the 
to  fill  any  vacancies  that  should  occur  among  themselves  New  World- 
from  death  or  resignation.  The  laws  enacted  by  them  were  subject 
to  revision  either  by  the  king  or  the  council  in  England.  No  part 
whatever  in  the  government  was  given  to  the  people ;  even  trial  by  jury 
was  allowed  only  in  cases  of  capital  crimes,  which  were  "  tumults,  re- 


268 


FIRST   ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT   IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XL 


bellion,  conspiracy,  meetings  and  sedition,  together  with  murder,  man 
slaughter,  incest,  rapes,  and  adultery ;  "  lesser  crimes  and  misdemean 
ors  were  to  be  tried  before  the  president  and  council,  and  punished 
according  to  their  will.  Real  estate  was  to  be  held  as  under  the  laws 
of  England,  but  for  the  first  five  years  all  personal  property  and  the 
fruits  of  the  labors  of  the  colonists  were  to  be  held  as  a  common 
stock,  and  each  member  of  the  community  was  to  be  supported 
from  the  general  store.  Religion  was  to  be  established  in  accord 
ance  with  the  rites  and  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  England  ;  the 

people  were  enjoined  by  virtue  of  such 
penalties  as  the  president  and  council 
should  choose  to  inflict,  to  "kindly 
treat  the  savage  and  heathen  people 
in  those  parts,  and  use  all  proper 
means  to  draw  them  to  the  true  service 
and  knowledge  of  God,"  and  also  to 
lead  them  to  "  good  and  sociable  traf 
fic."  Such  were  the  essential  features 
of  the  first  constitution  of  government 
established  within  the  limits  of  the 
present  United  States.  It  was  espec 
ially  the  work  of  that  pedantic  despot, 
James  I.,  who  afterward  amused  him 
self  with  drawing  up  a  code  of  laws 
for  the  administration  of  a  government 
where,  in  the  last  resort,  all  political  power  rested  in  his  hands,  and 
the  hands  of  those  of  his  appointment. 

In  the  summer  of  1606,  two  ships  sailed  for  New  England  under 
the  auspices  of  the  Plymouth  Company,  —  one  in  May  commanded  by 
Captain  Pring  ;  the  other  in  August,  of  which  Henry  Chalong  was 
Captain.1  Chalong  was  taken  by  the  Spaniards,  but  Pring  sailed 
along  the  coast  of  Maine  and  made,  on  his  return,  so  favorable  a  report 
of  the  country  that  Chief  Justice  Popham,  of  the  Plymouth  Company, 
determined,  the  next  year,  to  send  his  brother  George  Popham  and 
Raleigh  Gilbert,  a  son  of  Sir  Humphrey,2  to  settle  a  colony  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Sagadahoc.  As  this  colony,  however,  returned  to  Eng 
land  in  a  few  months  the  first  permanent  settlement  was  that  made  by 
the  London  Company  in  Virginia. 

1  Some  confusion  has  arisen  in  regard  to  these  voyages.     In  the  ship  with  Pring  went 
Captain  Hanam,  or  Hanham,  some  authors  say  as  master,  others  as  captain.     Strachey 
speaks  of  a  voyage  by  Captain  Haines,  which  is  probably  a  mistake  for  Hanam,  and  has 
led  some  writers  to  suppose  there  were  three  expeditions  sent  in  1606  by  the  Plymouth 
Company. 

2  See  Prince's  Worthies  of  Devon. 


James  I. 


1606.] 


THE   COLONY   SETS   OUT   FOR  VIRGINIA. 


269 


John  Smith. 


The  colony  numbered  one  hundred  and  five,  men  —  men  only,  for 
there  were  no  women.  Of  these  only  about  twenty  were  mechanics  ; 
of  the  rest,  some  were  soldiers,  some  were  servants,  and  Members  Of 
nearly  half  of  the  whole  number  were  "gentlemen,"  with  thecolony- 
whom  it  was  not  of  so  much  consequence  that  they  were  unaccus 
tomed  to  labor,  —  for  the  better  bred  and  better  educated  a  man  is, 
the  better  able  is  he  for  any  work  — 
but  that  they  looked  upon  labor  as  a 
degradation.  Among  its  most  nota 
ble  persons  were  Bartholomew  Gos- 
nold  and  Gabriel  Archer,  Gosnold's 
companion  in  the  Concord  and  his 
torian  of  that  expedition  ;  Edward 
Maria  Wingfield,  afterward  the  first 
governor;  the  Rev.  Robert  Hunt,  the 
chaplain,  a  good  man,  who  soon  had 
enough  to  do  to  keep  the  hands  of 
his  charge  from  each  others'  throats ; 
George  Percy,  a  brother  of  the  Earl 
of  Northumberland,  who  did  effi 
cient  service  in  the  early  struggles 
of  the  colony ;  and  John  Smith, 
already  distinguished  for  a  romantic  career  as  a  •  soldier  in  a  war 
against  the  Turks. 

They  sailed  from  Blackwall,  England,  on  the  19th  of  December, 
1606,  in  three  vessels:  the  largest,  the  Sarah  Constant,  of  one  Theysaiifor 
hundred  tons  burden,  the  second,  the  Grod- Speed,  of  forty,  Jem^er^6" 
the  third,  the  Discovery,  a  pinnace  of  twenty  tons  ; l  and  of  1606- 
this  little  fleet,  Captain  Christopher  Newport,  an  able  and  experienced 
sailor,  was  commander.  Contrary  winds  kept  them  hanging  about  the 
coast  for  five  weeks ;  when  fairly  started  on  their  western  course,  they 
went  —  though  Gosnold  and  Archer  could  have  taught  them  better  — 
by  the  old  route  of  the  West  Indies,  trading  with  the  Spaniards  and 
dallying  in  pleasant  places,  so  that  four  months  passed  before  they  saw 
the  coast  of  Virginia.2  The  delay  was  not  only  at  great  cost  of  pro 
visions,  which  they  soon  came  to  sorely  need,  but  so  long  a  voyage 
was  in  itself  enough  to  breed  discontent  among  men  who  must  have 
been  impatient  to  reach  their  destination.  Discontent  bred  insubor 
dination,  and  this  was  aggravated  by  the  ignorance  as  to  who  among 
them  was  to  be  in  authority  in  the  future  colony,  and  might,  therefore, 

1  Purchas,  vol.  iv. 

2  Smith's  History  of  Virginia,  book  iii.,  chap.  2,  says  five  months,  but  this  is  an  obvious 
blunder. 


270  FIRST   ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT   IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 

command  beforehand  obedience  and  respect ;  for  the  London  Council 
had  unwisely  ordered  that  the  seals  of  their  letters  of  instruction  and 
appointment  should  not  be  broken  till  the  colonists  had  landed  upon 
the  shores  of  Virginia.  Among  these  malcontents  John  Smith  made 
himself  peculiarly  obnoxious.  His  offence  may  have  been  in  reality 
nothing  more  serious  than  to  complain  loudly  of  a  delay,  which,  to  one 
of  his  active  and  impatient  temper,  must  needs  have  been  exceedingly 
irksome ;  but  perhaps  his  example  was  contagious,  and  it  was  there 
fore  thought  necessary  to  put  him  under  restraint.  He  was  accused 
(if  we  may  accept  his  own  statement)  of  an  intention  to  usurp  the 
government,  to  murder  the  council,  and  make  himself  king ; 1  whether 
charges  so  serious  were  really  believed  to  be  true,  or  were  only  meant 
to  curb  a  turbulent  disposition,  he  was  still  considered  as  under  arrest 
for  several  weeks  after  the  arrival  in  Virginia. 

The  intention,  it  is  supposed  —  though  on  insufficient  authority  — 
was  to  follow  the  Raleigh  colonies  and  go  to  Roanoke  Island  ;  the 
reckoning,  however,  was  in  fault,  if  that  was  their  purpose,  for  they 
overshot  it.  But  there  was,  probably,  no  such  intention.  The  in 
structions  of  the  Council  were  that  the  ships  should  seek  for  a  safe 
port  at  the  entrance  of  some  navigable  river,  and  if  more  than  one 
was  discovered  that  should  be  preferred,  if  there  were  any  such,  which 
had  two  branches.  Should  either  of  these  branches  come  from  the 
northwest  then  that  one  Avas  to  be  entered,  as  it  might  be  the  passage 
to  the  South  Sea.2  The  hope  of  finding  this  passage  the  London 
Council  never  relinquished  so  long  as  the  Company  remained  in  exist 
ence. 

Only  three  days  were  consumed  in  search  of  such  a  harbor,  and  on 
Arrival  in  *ne  26th  of  April,  1607,  they  sailed  into  Chesseian  (Chesa- 
couiftry.  peake)  Bay.  Its  southern  point  —  where  some  of  the  peo- 
Apni,  1607.  pje^  on  landing^  Were  attacked  by  the  Indians,  and  Gabriel 
Archer  and  a  sailor  wounded  —  they  called  Cape  Henry  ;  its  northern, 
Cape  Charles,  in  honor  of  the  sons  of  the  king.  They  would,  doubt 
less,  have  welcomed  the  sight  of  a  much  less  inviting  land  than  this 
after  the  long  delay ;  but  they  sailed  up  this  noble  bay  with  irrepres 
sible  delight,  eager  to  begin  their  work. 

Their  first  business  was  to  ascertain  who  among  them  were  to  have 
the  management  of  affairs.  On  the  night  of  their  arrival  at  Cape 
Henry  the  sealed  box  was  opened  and  it  was  ascertained  that  the 
council  was  to  consist  of  Bartholomew  Gosnold,  John  Smith,  Edward 
Wingfield,  Christopher  Newport,  John  Ratcliffe,  John  Martin,  and 
George  Kendall.  The  next  seventeen  days  were  spent  in  looking  for 

1  Smith's  General  History. 

2  See  instructions  in  full  in  Neill's  History  of  the  Virginia  Company  in  London. 


1607.] 


THE   BUILDING   OF  JAMESTOWN. 


271 


a  suitable  place  to  plant  the  colony,  about  which  there  was  much  dis 
agreement,  and  on  the  18th  of  May  they  fixed  on  the  present  site 
of  Jamestown  —  so  named  in  honor  of  the  king  —  on  a  pe 
ninsula   about   forty   miles   from    the    mouth  of  the    Pow-  tSfsiteV5* 
hatan,  which,  also  in  honor  of  James,  they  called  the  King's, 
and  afterward  James  River.     This  was  to  be  their  permanent  home ; 
the  council,  excepting  Smith,  were  sworn  into  office,  and  Wingfield 
chosen  president. 

Then  "  falleth  every  man  to  worke ;    the  Councell  contrive  the 
Fort,  the  rest  cut  downe  trees  to  make  place  to  pitch 
their  Tents ;    some  provide  clapboard  to  relade   the 
ships,  some  make  gardens, 
some  nets,  etc."  1     It  was 


•- 


Newport's   Embarkation. 

the  laying  of  the  first  solid  foundation  of  that  English  nation,  which 
Raleigh  had  said  five  years  before  he  should  yet  live  to  see. 

In  the  instructions  of  the  Council  the  emigrants  were  commanded  to 
discover  the  communication  which  was  supposed  to  exist  by  some  river 
or  lake  between  Virginia  and  the  South  Sea.  This  they  evidently 
looked  upon  as  one  of  their  first  duties,  and  accordingly  within  a  week 
Captain  Newport  "  fitted  out  a  shallop  with  provision  and  all  neces- 
saryes  belonging  to  a  discovery  "  — they  believed  they  had  not  far  to 
seek  —  and  proceeded  with  "  five  gentlemen,  four  maryners,  and 
fourteen  saylors,  with  a  perfect  resolutyon  not  to  returne,  but  either  to 
finde  the  head  of  this  ryver,  the  laake  mentyoned  by  others  hereto- 

1  Smith's  History,  book  i.,  chap.  1. 


272  FIRST    ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT  IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XL 

fore,  the  sea  againe,  the  mountaynes  Apalatai  [Appalachian]  or  some 
issue."  l  The  issue  was  that  they  returned  within  the  week  without 
having  discovered  either  the  head  of  the  river,  the  lake,  the  South 
Sea,  or  the  mountains. 

They  made,  however,  a  fair  survey  of  'James  River  for  a  hundred 
Newport's  anc^  ^ty  miles,  visiting  several  Indian  kings,  or  weroances, 
the  j7mefs  as  ^ieJ  were  called  in  the  native  tongue.  By  these  they  were 
River.  received  with  great  kindness,  and  made  welcome  with  venison, 
turkeys,  maize,  strawberries,  mulberries,  raspberries,  pornpions  (pump 
kins),  dried  nuts,  and  tobacco.  In  return  they  gave  their  hosts  the 
usual  gifts  of  beads  and  other  trifles,  inviting  the  chiefs  sometimes 
to  share  their  English  food,  and  drink  of  their  strong  drinks  to  that 
degree  as  to  make  the  simple  savage  both  sick  and  sullen.  One 
tribe  was  governed  by  a  "  queen,"  —  Queen  Ahumatec  —  "a  fatt, 
lustie,  manly  woman,"  dressed  in  a  copper  "  crownet,"  a  copper  neck 
lace,  a  deer-skin  girdle,  and  u  ells  (else)  all  naked."  She  affected  great 
state  and  was  haughty  in  demeanor,  but  "  cheered  somewhat  her 
countenance "  when  presented  liberally  with  gifts.  It  was  also  ob 
served  of  her,  that  she  was  much  less  affrighted  at  the  discharge  of  a 
gun  than  the  men.2 

Their  further  progress  up  the  river  was  stayed  at  that  point  where 
the  city  of  Richmond  now  stands,  and  where  the  water  fell  down 
"  through  great  mayne  rocks  from  ledges  of  rocks  above  two  fadome 
high."  Just  below  was  the  village  of  a  king  Pawatah  (Powhatan), — 
a  brother  or  son,  probably,  of  that  Powhatan  afterwards  known  as  the 
Emperor,  —  which  Newport  named  Pawatah's  Tower,  placed  upon  a 
hill  on  the  north  bank,  or  Popham  side  of  the  river ;  the  south  bank 
they  called  the  Salisbury  side.  At  this  point  it  was  proposed  to 
proceed  by  land  and  reach  the  Quirauk  (Blue  Ridge)  Mountains ; 
but  they  were  dissuaded  by  the  Indians,  who  represented  the  way  as 
tedious,  and  the  people  of  that  region  as  the  enemies  of  Powhatan. 
Here,  therefore,  ended  their  discoveries,  which,  though  they  did  not 
find  the  entrance  to  the  South  Sea,  they  hoped  would  "  tend  to  the 
glory  of  God,  his  majeste's  renowne,  our  countrye's  profytt,  our 
owne  advancing,  and  fame  to  all  posterity."3 

As  they  went  down  the  river,  they  observed  a  change  in  the  con 
duct  of  the  Indians  which  excited  their  apprehensions  ;  and  these  were 
well  founded,  for  on  reaching  Jamestown  they  learned  that  the  camp 
had  been  attacked  during  their  absence.  Several  of  the  men  were 

1  Captain  Newport's  Discoveries  in  Virginia.  First  published,  from  MS.  found  in  the  Eng 
lish  State  Paper  Office,  in  vol.  iv.  of  Collections  of  the  American  Antiquarian  Society,  1860. 


2  Ibid. 
8  Ibid. 


1607.]  NEWPORT'S  EXPEDITION.  273 

wounded,  one  boy  was  killed,  and  the  President,  Wingfield,  had  nar 
rowly  escaped,  an  arrow  having  passed  through  his  beard. 

George  Percy  and  Gabriel  Archer,  both  men  of  note,  went  with 
Newport  on  this  expedition,  and  were  probably  not  without  some 
share  in  its  responsibilities  and  success,  such  as  they  were.   New  ort?g 
The   coupling   of   Smith's  name  alone  with  Newport's,  in   ?0™p.anions 

A         °  i  in  this  expe- 

Smith's  "  History,"  is  an  assertion  of  a  prominence  belong-  dition- 
ing  quite  as  much  to  others  as  to  him.  Courageous,  enterprising,  and 
energetic  as  he  unquestionably  was,  he  was  inclined  to  make  himself, 
or  at  least  sanctioned  others  in  making  him,  more  the  hero  of  the 
early  history  of  Virginia  than  the  facts  seem  always  to  warrant.  His 
own  "  History"  is  apparently  the  only  authority  for  the  assertion  that 
he  was  arrested  in  the  West  Indies ;  and  such  an  arrest  must  have 
been  made,  if  made  at  all,  by  Newport's  orders.1  It  may  be  that  the 
difference  between  Smith  and  Wingfield,  which  afterward  led  to  such 
serious  results,  showed  itself  thus  early,  and  that  Newport  saw  the 
necessity  of  putting  a  restraint  upon  one  of  a  turbulent  and  daring 
character.  If  this  were  so,  it  is  more  probable  that  he  kept  Smith 
with  him  that  he  might  be  under  his  own  control,  and  prevented 
from  interfering  in  the  organization  of  affairs  at  the  fort,  rather  than 
that  he  divided  with  him  the  responsibility  and  honor  of  the  first 
expedition  into  the  interior. 

Newport  remained  at  the  fort  about  three  weeks  before  sailing  for 
England,  and  assisted  with  his  sailors  in  putting  it  in  a  better  state 
of  defence.  "We  labored,"  —  says  the  narrative  of  his  expedition, 
under  date  of  May  28th,  the  day  after  his  return  — "  pallaz-  Buildingthe 
doing  (palisading)  our  forte."  The  colony  had  been  on  shore  fort< 
a  fortnight,  and  had  protected  the  encampment  only  with  boughs  of 
trees.  The  attack  from  the  Indians  showed  that  more  efficient  de 
fence,  for  which  the  branches  were  only  a  temporary  substitute  and 
all  that  as  yet  there  had  been  time  to  put  up,  must  be  at  once  made, 
But  in  Smith's  "  History,"  we  are  told  that  "the  president's  overween 
ing  jealousy  would  admit  no  exercise  at  arms,  or  fortification,  but  the 
boughs  of  trees  cast  together  in  the  form  of  a  half  moon  by  the  extra 
ordinary  pains,  and  diligence  of  Captain  Kendall."  This  seems  to  be 
pure  detraction,  for  there  is  nowhere  else  any  intimation  that  Wing- 
field  was  wanting  in  diligence  and  energy,  and  the  Newport  narrative 
declares  that  at  the  first  attack  from  the  savages  he  "  shewed  himself 
a  valiant  gentleman,"  the  proof  whereof,  was  the  arrow  shot  through 
his  beard  when  with  four  others  of  the  council  he  took  the  post  of 
danger  in  the  front. 

1  We  find  no  mention  of  it  in  the  abridgment  in  Purchas  of  Percy's  Narrative,  in  the  re 
port  of  Newport's  expedition  up  the  James  River,  nor  in  Wingfield's  Discourse  of  Virginia. 


274  FIRST  ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT  IN  AMERICA.       [CHAP.  XL 

There  was  evidently  trouble  brewing  which  Newport  tried  to  avert 
before  he  sailed  on  the  21st  of  June.     Where  the  fault  lav 

Trouble  .  J 

brewing  m     is  not  clear,  but  there  was,  says  the   Newport  narrative, 

the  colony. 

"  among  the  gentlemen,  and  all  the  company,  a  murmur  and 
grudg  against  certayne  preposterous  proceedings,  and  inconvenyent 
courses."  A  petition  was  sent  in  to  the  council,  in  relation  to  these 
difficulties,  whatever  they  were,  and  Newport  by  "  fervent  pers way- 
son  "  won  a  "  uniformity  of  consent  "  among  them,  so  that,  continues 
the  narrator,  "  we  confirmed  a  faythfull  love  one  to  another ;  and  in 
our  heartes  subscribed  an  obedyence  to  our  superyors  this  day.  Cap 
tain  Smyth  was  this  day  sworne  one  of  the  Counsell,  who  was  elected 
in  England." 

A  compromise  was  thus  apparently  effected,  and  harmony  restored 
by  this  admission  of  Smith  to  the  board  of  councillors.  But  in 
Smith's  "  History"  there  is  a  material  difference  in  the  account  of  this 
transaction.1  Referring  to  his  arrest  in  the  West  Indies,  from  which 
he  was  not  released,  according  to  that  authority,  till  he  was  admitted 
to  the  council,  it  is  asserted  that  it  was  proposed  to  send  him  to  Eng 
land  for  trial.  "  But  he  so  much  scorned  their  charitie,"  says  the  nar 
rative,  "  and  publikely  defied  the  vttermost  of  their  crueltie,  he  wisely 
prevented  their  policies,  though  he  could  not  suppresse  their  envies. 
Many  vntruthes  were  alledged  against  him  ;  but  being  so 
apparently  disproved,  begat  a  generall  hatred  in  the  hearts  of  the 
company  against  such  vniust  Commanders,  that  the  President  was  ad- 
iudged  to  give  him  200£,  so  that  all  he  had  was  seized  vpon,  in  part 
of  satisfaction,  which  Smith  presently  returned  to  the  Store  for  the 
generall  vse  of  the  Colony."  Whether  there  was  any  such  arrest  or 
not,  there  is  good  reason  for  doubting  that  there  was  any  such  trial,  for 
it  is  not  mentioned  in  other  relations  of  the  troubles  of  that  period. 
Two  months  later,  however,  Wingfield,  who  had  then  been  deposed 
from  the  presidency,  was  called  before  the  council  to  answer  to  an 
action  of  slander  brought  by  Smith,  who,  he  said,  had  concealed  an 
intended  mutiny  ;  in  this  suit  Wingfield  was  adjudged  to  pay  a  fine 
of  £200  damages.2 

As  this  is  Wingfield's  own  acknowledgment,  there  can  be  no  reason 
able  doubt  of  its  truth,  since  he  could  have  no  motive  for  misrepresen 
tation  ;  while  if  the  statement  of  Smith's  "  History  "  —  hitherto  ac- 

1  Smith's  Generall  Historic,  which  is  a  compilation  of  the  narratives  of  various  persons 
published  under  his  name,  has  hitherto  been  the  main  reliance  of  writers  upon  this  period 
of  the  history  of  Virginia.     See  Stith,  Buck,  and  others  who  had  access  only  to  one  side 
of  the  story. 

2  A  Discourse  of  Virginia.      By  Edward  Maria  Wingfield.     Now  first  printed  from   the 
original  manuscript  in  the   Lambeth  Library.     Collections  of  the  American  Antiquarian  Soci 
ety,  1860. 


1607.]  GOVERNORSHIP   OF  WINGFIELD.  275 

cepted  in  the  absence  of  any  other  —  be  also  true,  then  we  are  to  be 
lieve  that  Wingfield  was  twice  condemned  that  summer,  to  pay  Smith 
.£200,  which  is  not  at  all  likely,  and  is  nowhere  asserted,  and  to  ac 
cept  also  the  occurrence  of  so  curious  a  legal  proceeding  as  the  trial  of 
one  man  —  Smith  —  for  treason,  whose  acquittal  involved  the  punish 
ment  of  another  man  —  Wingfield  —  who  was  not  on  trial  at  all.    But 
if  the  account  in  Smith's  "  History  "  of  the  circumstances  attending 
his  admission  to  the  council  be  rejected  in  so  important  a 
circumstance  on  the    testimony,  recently  published,  of  the   w^f?e°id's 
Newport  narrative  and  Wingfield's  "Discourse,"  it  is  im 
possible  not  to  question  its  truth  in  other  particulars,  and  to  doubt  not 
only  that  there  was  a  trial  at  that  time  for  treason,  but  that  there 
was  any  arrest. 

A  few  days  before  his  departure,  and  a  week  after  "•  the  faithful 
love  one  to  another "  was  confirmed  by  his  fervent  persuasions, 
Newport  asked  of  Wingfield  how  he  thought  himself  settled  in  the 
government.  Wingfield's  answer  was :  "  that  no  disturbance  could 
endanger  him  or  the  colony,  but  it  must  be  wrought  either  by  Captain 
Gosnold  or  Mr.  Archer  ;  for  the  one  was  strong  with  friends  and  fol 
lowers,  and  could  if  he  would ;  and  the  other  was  troubled  with  an 
ambitious  spirit,  and  would  if  he  could."  1  This  epigrammatic  presen 
tation  of  the  condition  of  affairs,  Newport  reported  to  both  Gosnold 
and  Archer,  and  urged  them,  with  many  entreaties,  to  be  mindful  of 
their  duties  to  the  king  and  the  colony.  The  internal  dissensions 
were  plain  enough  to  him  ;  perhaps  he  also  foresaw  how  they  might  be 
inflamed  by  the  sufferings  the  colonists  were  to  endure  for  want  of 
those  stores  consumed  on  the  long  voyage  from  England  which  should 
have  been  their  present  support. 

It  was  a  summer  of  great  hardship.     Early  in  July  disease  broke 
out  among  them,  partly  the  effect  of  climate,  but  more  often 
caused  and  aggravated  by  the  want  of  food  and  proper  shelter,   of  great 

T-II  M  TI  TIC  f  hardship. 

"  r  or  the  most  part,  says  .rercy,  "  they  died  of  mere  fam 
ine."  By  September  nearly  one  half  were  dead,  and  among  them 
Gosnold.  Wingfield  had  found  no  reason  to  fear  the  influence  which 
he  told  Newport,  "  that  worthy  and  religious  gent,"  had  over  the 
colonists.  Upon  Gosnold's  good-will,  the  president  said,  when  speak 
ing  of  his  death,  depended  the  success  of  his  own  administration  of 
affairs  and  of  the  colony  ;  and  so  much  did  he  rely  upon  his  counte 
nance  and  counsel  in  the  differences  between  himself  and  the  other 
councillors,  that  he  "  did  easily  foretel  his  owne  deposing  from  his 
command,"  when  his  friend  was  taken  ill.  This  good  opinion  of 
Wingfield's  is  confirmed  by  all  we  know  of  Gosnold,  who  seems,  in  the 

1  Wingfield's  Discourse  of  Virginia. 


276  FIRST   ENGLISH    SETTLEMENT   IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 

glimpses  we  have  of  him  here  and  elsewhere,  to  have  been  a  man  of 
thoughtful  mind,  calm  judgment,  and  self  reliant  temper.  He  deserves 
to  be  remembered  next  to  Raleigh  among  the  direct  founders  of  the 
American  colonies. 

But  for  the  scarcity  of  food  harmony  might  have  been  maintained 
among  the  leaders,  for  that  was  clearly  the  ostensible  and  a  bitter  cause 
of  quarrel,  whatever  ambitions  and  jealousies  may  have  lain  hidden 
beneath  the  surface.  They  might,  say  Smith's  partisans,  have  all  been 
canonized  as  saints  had  they  been  as  free  from  all  other  sins  as  from 
the  sins  of  gluttony  and  drunkenness  ;  for  a  half  pint  of  boiled  wheat 
and  another  of  barley,  infested  with  worms,  was  each  man's  daily 
allowance.1  The  president,  it  is  said,  exempted  only  himself  from  this 
Accusations  penurious  and  fatal  diet,  keeping  for  his  own  use  all  the  good 
wfngfleid.  things  in  store,  and  denying  them  even  to  the  sick.  On  the 
HIS  defence.  o^|ier  lian(J  Wingfield  says  in  his  defence :  "  As  I  understand 
by  a  report  I  am  much  charged  with  staruing  the  colony.  I  did 

alwaies  giue  every  man  his  allowance  faithfully It  is 

further  said  I  did  much  banquet  and  ryot.  I  never  had  but  one  squir- 
ell  roasted,  whereof  I  gave  part  to  Mr.  Ratcliff ,  then  sick,  yet  was  that 
squirell  given  me.  I  did  never  heate  a  flesh  pott  but  when  the  com 
mon  pot  was  so  likewise."  When  the  store  of  oil,  vinegar,  sack,  and 
aquavitas  was  all  spent,  saving  two  gallons  of  each,  he  ordered  the 
vessels  containing  them  to  be  "  boonged  vpp,"  reserving  the  sack  for 
the  communion  table,  the  other  articles  for  emergencies  of  extreme 
sickness.  Gosnold,  whom  he  consulted,  approved  of  this  pious  and 
prudent  action ;  but  when  he  was  dead  and  the  president  told  the  rest 
of  the  council  of  this  little  reserve  of  precious  stores,  he  exclaims  : 
"  Lord,  how  they  then  longed  for  to  supp  up  that  little  remnant !  for 
they  had  no  we  emptied  all  their  own  bottles  and  all  other  that  they 
could  smell  out."  And  this  small  reserve,  when  they  afterward  came 
into  possession  of  it,  they  "  poored  into  their  own  bellyes."  Again  and 
again,  the  council  demanded  of  him,  he  declares,  larger  allowances  for 
themselves  and  their  favorites  who  were  sick.  The  president,  protest 
ing  he  would  not  be  partial,  refused  unless  his  associates  would  take  the 
responsibility  by  official  action  ;  for  had  he  at  that  time  enlarged  the 
proportions  of  food  allowed  to  each  man  it  would  have  been,  he  de 
clares,  to  have  starved  the  whole  colony,  and  he  would  not  join 
with  them,  therefore,  in  such  ignorant  murder  without  their  own 
warrant. 

Early  in  September,  Wingfield  says  the  three  other  members  of  the 

1  "  Our  food  was  but  a  small  can  of  barley  sod  in  water,  to  five  men  a  day  ;  our  drinke, 
cold  water  taken  out  of  the  river,  which  was  at  flood  very  salt,  at  a  low  tide  full  of  slime 
and  filth ;  which  was  the  destruction  of  many  of  our  men."  Percy  in  Purchas 


1607.] 


DISCONTENT  AND   SUFFERING. 


277 


council,  llatcliffe,  Smith,  and  Martin,  waited  upon  him  and  by  war 
rant  deposed  him  from  both  the  council  and  the  presidency.   Wingfield 
He  declined  at  first  to  be  thus  summarily  dealt  with  ;  more  deP°sed- 
than  once  he  reminded  them  he  had  offered  his  resignation,  which  the 
council  had  refused  to  accept,  and  now  they  could  not  legally  remove 
him,  as,  according  to  the  charter,  that  must  be  done  by  a  majority  of  a 
full  council  of  thirteen.     But  finally,  he  gave  up  the  contest,  saying, 
"  I  ame  at  your  pleasure  ;  dispose  of  me  as  you  will,  without  further 
garboiles." 

The  next  day  he  was  called  before  the  council,  and  the  change  in 
the  government 
was  made  known 
and  discussed  at  a 
public  meeting  of 
the  colonists.  The 
three  councillors 
gave  the  reasons 
for  their  action, 
and  with  two  of 
them  hunger  evi 
dently  was  at  the 
bottom  of  their 
discontent.  Rat- 
cliffe,  the  new 
president,  com 
plained  that  he 
had  been  denied 
*'  a  penny  whitle, 
(a  small  pocket- 
knife  probably 
wanted  for  trade 
with  the  Indians), 
a  chickyn,  a  spoon 
ful  of  beere,  and 
served  with  foule 
corne ;  "  Martin  declared  that  Wingfield  had  neglected  his  duties 
to  the  colony,  "did  nothing  but  tend  his  pott,  spitt  and  oven;" 
and  had,  moreover,  starved  his  son  and  denied  him  "  a  spoonefull  of 
beere.''  All  this  would  seem  frivolous  enough  if  we  did  not  remem 
ber  that  these  poor  people  were  in  the  extremity  of  hunger,  against 
which  no  dignity  is  proof.  But  Smith  showed  a  nobler  passion.  He 
repelled  an  accusation  of  lying  ;  he  resented  the  scorn  with  which 
he  had  been  treated  by  Wingfield,  who  said  that  though  they  were 


Deposition  of  Wingfield. 


278  FIRST   ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT   IN  AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 

equals  here,  in  England  Smith  would  not  be  a  fit  companion  for  his  — 
Wingfield's  —  servant.  Archer,  who  was  now  made  recorder,  and  sub 
sequently  a  member  of  the  council,  followed  with  other  charges  in 
writing,  too  slight  to  be  remembered,  though  the  accuser,  says  Wing- 
field,  "  glorieth  much  in  his  penn  worke." 

Kendall  was  deposed  from  the  council  earlier  than  Wingfield,  and 
Kendaii  shot  seems  to  have  belonged  to  neither  party,  or,  perhaps,  to  each 
for  mutiny,  foy  turns.  He  was  confined  for  a  time  with  the  ex-president 
on  board  the  pinnace,  and  was  subsequently  tried  for  mutiny,  and  shot. 
In  arrest  of  judgment  the  poor  man  objected  that  the  new  president's 
name  was  not  Ratcliffe  but  Sicklemore,  and  the  plea  was  allowed  ; 
but  judgment,  nevertheless,  was  pronounced  by  Martin.  Afterward, 
according  to  the  sequence  of  the  narrative  —  though  neither  the  data 
of  Kendall's  execution  nor  of  this  incident  is  given  —  Wingfield  was 
summoned  to  appear  before  the  council,  which  he  refused  to  do  on  the 
ground  that  he  was  not  legally  deposed,  but  suggested,  instead,  a  con 
ference  in  the  presence  of  ten  of  the  most  trustworthy  gentlemen  of 
the  colony.  This  being  granted,  he  proposed,  inasmuch  Vi  as  he  had 
no  joy  "  to  live  longer  under  the  laws  and  government  of  the  present 
rulers  and  "  much  mi  silking  their  triumvirate,"  to  return  to  England 
and  report  to  the  London  Council  the  sad  condition  of  their  charge 
in  Virginia ;  not  that  he  was  anxious  to  leave  the  colony,  for  he  was 
quite  willing  to  remain  if  either  Ratcliffe  or  Archer  would  undertake 
this  errand  ;  but  if  it  were  thought  better  that  the  enterprise  should 
be  altogether  abandoned  he  would  give  a  hundred  pounds  toward  de 
fraying  the  expenses  of  taking  the  whole  company  home.  These 
propositions  were  all  rejected  ;  even  the  making  them  was  considered 
a  defiance  of  the  council,  and  the  fort  opened  fire  upon  the  pinnace 
apparently  to  prevent  Wingfield's  departure.  If  he  really  intended 
to  abandon  his  companions  without  regard  to  their  wishes,  this  hostile 
measure  answered  its  purpose. 

Meanwhile  the  distress  of  the  colonists  would  have  been  more  dis- 
gervices  of  astrous  than  it  was  but  for  the  kindness  of  the  Indians,  who, 
fo^heS"oi-h  when  affairs  were  at  the  worst,  brought  them  maize  and 
ony-  other  provisions.  The  energy  of  Smith  was  at  the  same 

time  of  the  greatest  service.  Taking  a  few  men  with  him  in  a  boat 
he  traded  up  and  down  the  rivers  gathering  supplies.  When  the 
savages  were  insolent  and  refused  to  trade,  he  brought  them  to  terms 
by  force  of  arms.  But  returning  from  one  of  these  excursions  he  found 
—  according  to  the  "  General  History  "  —  that  Wingfield  and  Kendall, 
then  living  in  disgrace  on  board  the  pinnace,  seeing  all  things  at  ran 
dom  in  the  absence  of  Smith,  were  attempting  to  regain  their  lost 
authority,  or  to  take  the  pinnace  and  sail  for  England.  This  plot  was 


1607.]  DISSATISFACTION  IN  THE   COLONY.  279 

discovered  to  Smith  on  his  unexpected  return,  "  and  much  trouble  he 
had,"  continues  the  account,  "  to  prevent  it,  till  with  store  of  sakre 
and  musket  shot  he  forced  them  stay  or  sinke  in  the  river,  which  action 
cost  the  life  of  Captaine  Kendall."  Wingfield's  proposition,  that  either 
he,  or  Ratcliffe,  or  Archer  should  go  to  England,  was  construed  into  a 
mutiny,  as  we  know  from  Wingfield's  own  representation,  and  both 
these  relations  undoubtedly  refer  to  the  same  incident ;  but  that  Ken 
dall's  death  was  the  result  in  any  sense  of  that  attack  upon  the  pin 
nace  cannot  be  true  if  Wingfield's  statement  be  correct  that  he  was 
previously  tried  and  executed. 

It  is  difficult  to  reconcile  such  discrepancies  in  any  other  way  than 
to  suppose  a  determination  on  the  part  of  the  writer  in  Smith's  "  His 
tory  "  to  justify  Smith  and  to  magnify  his  services.  That  Wingfield 
and  Kendall  took  advantage  of  his  absence  to  carry  out  their  treason 
able  purposes,  and  that  it  was  only  his  opportune  return,  and  his 
prompt  and  energetic  action,  ending  in  the  death  of  one  of  the  ring 
leaders  in  the  mutiny,  that  averted  a  serious  disaster,  is  a  heroic  view 
of  affairs  with  Smith  as  the  principal  figure,  greatly  redounding  tc 
his  credit.  But  in  conflict  with  it  is  Wingfield's  essentially  probable 
and  apparently  truthful  narrative  of  the  struggle  between  him  and 
the  council,  and  between  the  council  and  others ;  of  the  criminations 
and  recriminations,  of  the  orders  and  disobedience,  the  conferences,  the 
resistance  and  violent  remedies  which  followed  in  turn,  and  in  all  of 
which  many  of  the  colonists,  as  was  natural,  were  warmly  enlisted. 
It  is  a  representation  of  events  differing  from  the  history  of  the  period 
hitherto  accepted,  and  in  it  Smith's  part  seems  neither  so  important 
nor  so  praiseworthy  as  it  has  usually  been  made  to  appear. 

Whatever  was  the  weakness  of  Wingfield's  administration,  Smith 
and  his  friends  were  as  little  satisfied  with  that  of  Ratcliffe  Djsgatigfac_ 
and  Martin.  It  was  because  "  of  the  companies  dislike  of  thTadminis- 
their  president's  weaknes,  and  their  small  love  to  Martin's  tratlon- 
never  mending  sicknes,"  that  Smith  found  "  all  things  at  randome  " 
on  the  occasion  just  referred  to.  According  to  the  same  authority, 
soon  after  bringing  Wingfield  to  obedience  and  Kendall  to  punish 
ment,  he  was  called  upon  to  deal  with  other  offenders.  Ratcliffe  and 
Archer  next  proposed  to  abandon  the  colony  to  its  fate,  "  which  proj 
ect  also  was  curbed  and  suppressed  by  Smith."  As  the  winter  ap 
proached,  however,  tranquillity  was  restored,  when,  as  the  harvests  were 
gathered,  game  became  plentiful,  and  there  was  enough  to  eat ;  then 
no  more  of  the  "Tuftaffaty  humorists  desired  to  goe  for  England."1 

Smith  had  now  leisure  for  further  exploration  into  the  interior. 
Wingfield  says  that  he  started  on  the  10th  of  December  to  go  up  the 

1   Smith's  General  History. 


280 


FIRST   ENGLISH    SETTLEMENT   IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 


Chickahominy  to  trade  for  corn,  and  to  find  the  head  of  that  river. 
On  its  upper  waters  two  of  his  men,  who  were  left  with  a  canoe,  were 
slain  by  the  Indians,  Pamunkey's  men,  and  Smith  himself,  who  was 
on  shore  at  some  distance,  was  taken  prisoner,  his  life  being  saved 
"  by  the  means  of  his  guide,"  who  was  an  Indian.  He  was  taken  to 
several  of  the  neighboring  chiefs  to  see  if  he  could  be  recognized  as 
one  of  a  party  who,  two  or  three  years  before,  had  kidnapped  some 
Indians ; 1  he  was  taken  at  last  to  the  great  Powhatan,  who  sent  him 
back  to  Jamestown  on  the  8th  of  January.  He  had  been  absent  just 
four  weeks. 

Smith's  life  was  saved,  says  Wingfield,  by  means  of  his  guide.  The 
smith  is  taken  story  as  usually  told  is  that  Smith  tied  the  Indian  to  himself 
prisoner.  with  his  garters,  and  held  him  as  a  shield  against  the  arrows 
of  his  assailants.  Making  his  way  toward  the  boat,  which  he  had  left 
in  charge  of  two  of  his  men,  he  and  the  guide  slipped  together  into 


thty  too^e  lamynjpner 
tfuffaze  Iff  Of. 


r^TSsg-i  jiyliteth  with  ilielQnq  efVSimxarJzc  e  /znrf-5! 
..^i£.     allTusconvfjany,ari(lj]cw3  oftfiern.'ic^m 


From  Smith's  "  General  History."     [Fac-simile.] 

an  "  oasie  creek,"  from  which  it  was  impossible  to  extricate  them 
selves.  Half  dead  with  cold,  he  at  length  threw  away  his  arms  and 
surrendered,  and  was  taken  before  Opechankanough,  King  of  Pa- 
munkey.  He  sought  to  propitiate  the  chief  by  presenting  him  with 
"  a  round  Ivory  double  compass  Dyall."  The  savages  marvelled  much 
at  the  playing  of  the  needle  which  they  could  see,  but,  for  the  glass 
over  it,  could  not  touch.  With  this  "  globe  like  jewel,"  Smith  ex 
plained  to  the  king  and  his  people  the  movements  of  the  sun,  moon, 

1  There  is  no  record  of  any  voyage  to  Virginia  within  two  or  three  years  previous  to  the 
settlement  of  Jamestown  when  any  Indians  were  kidnapped,  and  if  this  refers  to  those 
taken  by  Weymouth  and  carried  to  England  in  1605,  it  shows  a  more  intimate  relation  be 
tween  the  tribes  of  New  England  and  those  of  Virginia  than  has  been  supposed  to  exist. 


1607.]  SMITH  TAKEN   PRISONER  BY   THE   INDIANS.  281 

and  stars,  the  shape  of  the  earth,  the  extent  of  land  and  sea,  the  dif 
ference  in  the  races  of  men,  and  "  many  other  suchlike  matters,"  at 
which,  it  was  hardly  necessary  to  add,  the  savages  "  all  stood  as 
amazed  with  admiration."  They  nevertheless  tied  the  lecturer  to  a 
tree,  and  were  about  to  shoot  him  to  death  with  arrows,  when  Ope- 
chankanough,  who  seemed  to  have  a  better  appreciation  than  his  fol 
lowers  had  of  the  sciences  of  astronomy  and  cosmography,  holding  up 
the  wonderful  compass,  stayed  the  execution.  They  then  released 
the  prisoner,  fed  him,  and  used  him  well. 

So  well,  indeed,  did  they  feed  him,  that  he  thought  they  meant  to 
fatten  him  for  a  feast ;  and  they  received  him  otherwise  with  so  much 
honor,  that  they  dressed  themselves  in  their  brightest  paints,  the  plum 
age  of  the  most  brilliant  birds,  the  choicest  rattle-snake  tails,  and 
"such  toys," — adding,  perhaps,  as  Strachey  says  the  Indians  some 
times  did,  "  a  dead  ratt  tyed  by  the  tail,  and  such  like  conundrums," 
—  and  so  attired  danced  before  him  and  the  king,  "singing  and  yell 
ing  out  with  hellish  notes  and  screeches."  They  promised  him,  more 
over,  life  and  liberty,  land  and  women,  if  he  would  aid  them  by  his 
advice  in  an  attack  upon  Jamestown  ;  but  from  this  he  dissuaded  them 
by  representations  of  the  mines,  great  guns,  and  other  engines  with 
which  such  an  attack  would  be  repulsed.  When  he  persuaded  them 
to  send  a  letter  to  the  fort,  and  the  messengers  brought,  as  he  prom 
ised  they  should,  such  things  as  he  asked  for,  the  savages  were  amazed 
anew,  that  either  the  paper  itself  spoke  to  those  who  received  it,  or 
that  Smith  had  the  power  of  divination. 

This  clothed  and  bearded  white  man  was  a  strange  spectacle  to  the 
Indians,  and  men,  women,  and  children  crowded  to  see  him,  as  he  was 
led  from  tribe  to  tribe.  At  length  he  was  taken  before  the 
great  king  of  all,  Powhatan,  at  a  place  called  Werowoco-  before 
moco,  which  signifies  king's  house,  on  the  north  side  of  the 
York  River,  and  only  fourteen  or  fifteen  miles  from  Jamestown. 
When  Smith  was  led  into  his  presence,  the  emperor  received  him  in 
state,  seated  on  a  throne  which  was  much  like  a  bedstead,  clothed  in  a 
robe  of  raccoon  skins.  On  each  side  of  him  sat  a  young  girl  of  six 
teen  or  eighteen  years,  and  beyond  them  a  double  row  of  men  and 
women,  their  heads  and  shoulders  painted  red  and  adorned  with 
feathers.  A  queen  served  the  prisoner  with  water  to  wash  his  hands, 
and  a  bunch  of  feathers  on  which  to  dry  them ;  a  feast  was  spread 
before  him  as  if  he  were  an  honored  friend  and  welcome  guest,  for 
such  was  the  Indian  treatment  of  those  who  presently  were  to  be  led 
out  to  die. 

This  ceremonious  and  hospitable  reception  was  followed  by  a  brief 
consultation  between  the  king  and  his  chief  men.  Two  great  stones 


282 


FIRST   ENGLISH    SETTLEMENT   IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 


were  then  brought  in,  to  which  Smith  was  dragged,  and  his  head  laid 
upon  them.  The  executioners  stood  ready  to  beat  out  his 

is  said  to  brains  with  their  clubs,  but  at  this  critical  moment,  "  Poca- 
hontas,  the  King's  dearest  daughter,  when  no  intreaty  could 

prevaile,  got  his  head  in  her  arms,  and  laid  her  owne  vpon  his  to  sane 


Po  what  an.  com/mas  C.Sinilh  t  a  be 

daughter Pokahontas  &^v hi 'sliji  his  tticni  kfullne/S 
and  how  lie  Subieclert  3,$>  of  their  \inas  readej> 


From  Smith's  "General  History."     [Fac-simile.] 

him  from  death  :    whereat  the  Emperour  was  contented  he  should 
Hue  to  make  him  hatchets,  and  her  bells,  beads,  and  copper." 

The  authority  for  this  romantic  story  is  Smith's  "  General  History." 
With  other  things,  it  has  come  to  be  considered  an  estab 
lished  historical  fact  because  that  work  was  long  accepted 
of  "his"cap-   as  the  best,  as  it  is  the  fullest,  of  the  contemporary  narra 
tives  of  the  adventures  of  the  Jamestown  colonists  for  the 
first  two  years.     Obscurer  authors  were  either  not  consulted  or  were 
unknown  by  those  who  gave  currency  to  these  relations.     But  Wing- 


Discrepan 
cies  in  the 
two  accounts 


1608.]  INCONSISTENCIES  IN   SMITH'S   STORY.  283 

field,  who  records  with  such  accuracy  all  the  essential  facts  of  Smith's 
capture,  and  his  return  to  the  fort  by  Powhatan,  says  nothing  of  Poca- 
hontas;  Strachey,  to  whom  this  young  girl  was  evidently  an  object  of 
interest,  and  who  speaks  in  terms  of  praise  of  Smith's  services  and 
hazards  on  behalf  of  the  colony,  and  of  his  great  experience  among 
the  Indians,  makes  no  allusion  to  this  romance  in  the  life  of  both ; 
Hamor,  who  was  also  at  one  time  secretary  of  the  colony,  and  whose 
tract1  is  largely  a  biography  of  Pocahontas  and  of  her  interesting 
relations  to  the  English,  is  silent  on  this  first  important  service  ren 
dered  by  her  to  one  of  the  principal  men  of  the  colony. 

And  even  Smith  differs  with  himself  in  different  publications,  as  to 
the  treatment  he  met  with  from  Powhatan.  In  his  first  book,  the 
"  True  Relation,"  published  in  1608,  he  says  that  the  emperor  "kindly 
received  me  with  good  words,  and  great  platters  of  sundry  victuals ; 
assuring  me  of  his  friendship,  and  my  liberty  in  four  days."  After 
much  kindly  conversation  between  them,  Powhatan  "  thus  having, 
with  all  the  kindness  he  could  devise,  sought  to  content  me,  he  sent 
me  home  with  four  men  —  one  that  usually  carried  my  gown  Inconsist. 
and  knapsack  after  me,  two  others  loaded  with  bread,  and  filth's"1 
one  to  accompany  me."  Such  treatment  is  altogether  incon-  8tory" 
sistent  with  a  design  upon  his  life,  nor  is  there  any  hint  of  such  an  in 
tention  in  the  savage  chief,  or  of  the  interference  of  his  little  daughter 
to  avert  it.  It  is  only  in  the  "  General  History,"  first  published  in 
1624,  that  the  narrative  of  Smith's  captivity  asserts  that  the  prisoner 
was  sentenced  to  death  by  Powhatan,  and  his  life  saved  by  Pocahon 
tas.2  Then  we  are  told  that  he  was  sent  back  in  a  few  days  to  James 
town,  not  with  four  friendly  guides  only,  who  carried  his  clothing  or 
were  laden  with  provisions,  but  with  twelve  savages,  with  whom  he 
did  not  feel  that  his  life  was  safe  till  within  the  palisades  and  under 
the  protecting  guns  of  the  fort.  Meanwhile  between  the  publication  of 
the  "  True  Relation  "  of  1608,  and  that  of  the  "  General  History  "  of 
1624,  the  princess  had  become  famous  as  the  "  Lady  Rebecca ; "  by  her 
services  to  the  colony;  by  her  marriage  with  an  Englishman,  Rolfe; 
by  her  visit  to  England,  presentation  at  court,  and  her  baptism  into 
the  Christian  Church ;  and  by  her  death  on  the  eve  of  her  return  to 
her  own  country. 

This  Powhatan,  who  was  called  an  emperor  by  the  earlier  writers, 
was  the  most  powerful  of  all  the  Indian  chiefs  of  Virginia,  The  great 
and  became  an  important  person  in  the  history  of  the  colony.   Lfcin.  °* 
Smith  was  the  first  to  meet  with  him ;  the  Pawatah  who  had  enter- 

1  A  True  Discourse  of  the  Present  Estate  of  Virginia  until  18th  of  June,  1614.     By  Ralph 
Hamor,  Jr. 

2  See  comments  on  this  subject  by  Charles  Deane  in  his  edition  of  Smith's  True  Relation. 


284 


FIRST   ENGLISH    SETTLEMENT  IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XL 


tained  Newport  and  his  companions,  some  months  before,  at  the 
falls  of  James  River,  being  another  and  less  powerful  chief,  perhaps 
a  son  of  Powhatan.  For  Powhatan  was  a  native  of  the  country  just 
above  the  falls  of  the  James,  and  it  was  from  it  that  he  took  his  name. 
Among  his  own  people  he  was  known  as  Ottaniack,  or  as  Mamanato- 
wick,  the  latter  meaning  great  king  ;  but  his  true  name,  and  that 
by  which  he  was  saluted  by  his  subjects,  was  Wahunsenacawh.1  He 
is  described  as  a  goodly  old  man,  "  well  beaten  with  many  cold  and 
stormye  winters,"  being  somewhere  about  eighty  years  of  age.  He 
was  tall  in  stature,  stalwart  and  well  shaped  of  limb,  sad  of  coun 
tenance  though  his  face  was  round  and  fat,  and  his  thin  gray  hairs 
hung  down  upon  his  broad  shoulders.  As  in  his  younger  years  he 
had  been  strong  and  able,  so  also  had  he  been  a  cruel  savage,  "dar 
ing,  vigilante,  ambitious,  subtile  to  enlarge  his  dominions,"  striking 
terror  and  awe  into  neighboring  chiefs.  Though  in  his  old  age  he 

delighted  in  security  and 
pleasure,  and  lived  in  peace 
with  all  about  him,  he  was 
from  the  first  watchful  and 
jealous  of  these  white-faced 
strangers  who  were  pene 
trating  his  rivers,  devour 
ing  his  corn,  and  building 
houses  within  his  dominions. 
With  that  Indian  subtlety 
of  which  he  was  peculiarly 
a  master,  he  sought  their 
friendship,  when  that  would 
best  serve  his  purpose,  but 
never  letting  an  opportunity 
pass  to  cut  them  off  when  it 
could  be  done  with  little  or 
no  loss  to  himself  and  his 
people.2 

He  had,  it  was  said,  many 
more  than  a  hundred  wives, 
of  whom  about  a  dozen,  all 
young  women,  were  special 
favorites.  When  in  bed 
one  sat  at  his  head,  and  another  at  his  feet ;  when  at  meat  one  was 
at  his  right  hand,  another  at  his  left.  Of  his  living  children,  when 
he  first  became  known  to  the  English,  twenty  were  sons  and  twelve 

1  Strachey's  Historic  of  Travaile  into  Virginia,  p.  48.  2  Strachey,  pp.  49,  54. 


POWHATAlSr 

&Jiate  &L  Ja/7iic77  whm.  Copt'  SmitJi 
s-u/as  dtluiered  fo  Mm  pri/oner 


From  Smith's  "General  History."     [Fac-simile.] 


1608.]  SMITH'S   RETURN   FROM   CAPTIVITY.  285 

were  daughters,  and  among  these  last  was  one  "  whome  he  loved 
well,  Pochahuntas,  which  may  signifie  little  wanton  ;  howbeyt  she 
was  rightly  called  Amonate  at  more  ripe  yeares,"  in  accordance 
with  an  Indian  custom  in  the  naming  of  their  children.  She 
was  well  known  at  Jamestown  at  an  early  period.  The  In 
dian  girls  wore  no  clothing  till  the  age  of  eleven  or  twelve  years,  nor 
were  "  they  much  ashamed  thereof,  and  therefor,"  continues  Strachey, 
"  would  Pochahuntas,  a  well-featured  but  wanton  young  girle,  Pow- 
hatan's  daughter,  sometymes  resorting  to  our  fort,  of  the  age  then  of 
eleven  or  twelve  yeares,  get  the  boys  forth  with  her  into  the  markett 
place,  and  make  them  wheele,  falling  on  their  hands,  turning  up  their 
heeles  upwards,  whome  she  would  followe  and  wheele  so  herself,  naked 
as  she  was,  all  the  fort  over."  As  Strachey  did  not  go  to  Virginia 
till  1610,  and  if  he  saw  this  young  princess  in  that  year,  then  eleven 
or  twelve  years  of  age,  "turning  cart-wheels"  among  the  boys  of 
Jamestown,  she  could  have  been  only  eight  or  nine  years  old  at  the 
time  Smith  was  taken  prisoner  by  her  father.  Elsewhere  speaking 
of  her  as  "  using  sometyme  to  our  fort  in  tymes  past,"  he  adds, 
"  no  we  married  to  a  private  captaine,  called  Kocoum,  some  two  yeares 
since."  l 

Again,  we  hear  that  Smith,  on  his  return,  found  the  colony  "  all 
in  combustion  ;  "  that  some  of  the  leaders  were,  as  usual,  engaged  in 
that  inexplicable  preparation  to  run  away  with  the  pinnace,  which 
never  came  to  anything ;  and  once  more  that  Smith,  for  the  third 
time,  and,  at  "the  hazard  of  his  life,  with  sakre,  falcon  and  musket 
shot,  forced  them  to  stay  or  sink." 

It  is  remarkable  with  what  ingratitude  these  repeated  services,  if 
they  were  rendered,  were  received  by  a  people  among  whom   there 
seems  to  have  been  little  law  but  the  law  of  the  strongest ;  for  on  this 
very  day  of  Smith's  return,  and  while  he  was  compelling  obedience  on 
board  the  pinnace  with  the  guns  of  the  fort,  the  council,  through  the 
influence  of  Archer,  were  trying  him  by  the  Levitical  law,  for  the 
death  of  the  two  men  who  were  killed,  while  under  his  command,  by 
the  savages.     He  was  adjudged  guilty,  and  to  be  put  to  death  the 
next  day;   "but,"  says  the  "General  History,"  "he  quickly  tooke 
such  order  with  such  Lawyers,  that  he  layd  them  by  the  heeles  till 
he  sent  some  of  them  prisoners  to  England."     Wingfield  agrees  that 
Smith  was  tried  on  the  day  of  his  return,  and  condemned  to  opportune 
be  hanged  either  that  or  the  next  day,  but  that  his  life  was  captain0* 
saved  by  the  opportune  arrival  of  Newport.     Of  an  attack  NewP°rt- 
on  the  pinnace  at  the  same  time  by  Smith,  he  says  nothing.     In  the 

1  Major,  the  editor  of  Strachey's  Historic  of  Travaile  into  Virginia,  supposes  it  must  have 
been  written  between  1612  and  1616. 


286  FIRST   ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT  IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XL 

"  True  Relation,"  Smith  says  that  he  was  welcomed  back  with  truest 
signs  of  joy,  by  all  except  Archer  and  two  or  three  others,  and  that 
these  laid  "  great  blame  and  imputation  "  upon  him  for  the  loss  of  the 
two  men,  slain  by  the  Indians.  "  In  the  midst  of  my  miseries,"  he 
adds,  "  it  pleased  God  to  send  Captaine  Nuport  the  same  night, 
and  for  a  while  those  plots  against  me  were  deferred." 
There  is  no  boastful  assertion  of  laying  his  enemies  by  the  heels, 
nor  of  his  bringing  mutineers  to  order  on  board  the  pinnace.  The 
narrative  simply  and  naturally  recognizes  his  own  troubles,  and  is 
thankful  for  the  arrival  of  one  more  powerful  than  any  of  the  fac 
tious  leaders,  to  bring  security  and  peace. 

On  every  account,  Newport's  arrival  was  opportune.  In  less  than 
nine  months  the  colony  had  become  reduced  to  about  forty  persons, 
and  his  ship  brought  to  a  starving  and  despairing  people  an  addition 
of  one  hundred  and  twenty  men,  besides  a  stock  of  provisions,  of  im 
plements  of  husbandry,  and  of  seeds.  About  the  time  of  his  arrival 
a  fire  which  nearly  destroyed  the  fort,  consumed  the  entire  stock  of 
stores  procured  from  the  Indians,  reducing  the  colonists  to  complete 
dependence  upon  the  supplies  brought  by  Newport.  Unfortunately, 
however,  Newport  and  his  crew  remained  for  fourteen  weeks  at  James 
town,  and  helped  in  the  consumption  of  these  provisions.  Near  the 
fort  a  deposit  of  yellow  mica  was  found,  which  was  mistaken  for  gold. 
The  colonists  were  quite  ready  to  take  the  risk  of  starvation,  that  the 
ship  might  be  laden  with  this  useless  dirt.  That  it  was  useless,  some 
of  the  more  judicious,  and  Smith  among  them,  were  convinced,  for 
there  could  be  no  hope  of  productive  industry  till  this  dream  of  sud 
den  wealth  was  dispelled.  Happily  it  did  not  last  long,  for  in  the 
spring  when  the  second  vessel,  which  had  sailed  with  Captain  New 
port  from  England  but  had  been  detained  in  the  West  Indies  by  bad 
weather,  arrived,  she  was  sent  home  with  a  cargo  of  cedar.  Wingfield 
and  Archer  returned  home  in  one  of  these  vessels,  and  Martin  in  the 
other,  leaving  Smith  the  principal  person  of  the  colony,  and  without 
rivals. 

Newport  spent  a  portion  of  the  time  of  his  stay  in  a  visit  to  Pow- 

hatan,  whose  friendship  he  evidently  deemed  of  great  im- 
vituPtor  s  portance  to  the  colony.  The  emperor  received  him  with 

great  courtesy,  seated,  as  when  Smith  was  led  into  his  pres 
ence  not  long  before  as  a  prisoner,  upon  his  bedstead  throne,  and 
surrounded  by  his  warriors  and  women.  He  had  received  from  Smith 
—  who  had  entertained  him  on  that  occasion  with  a  number  of  re 
markable  stories,  all  lies,  as  to  the  motives  which  had  led  the  English 
to  that  country  —  an  exalted  notion  of  the  power  of  Newport.  No 
doubt  to  prove  that  he  was  as  generous  as  he  was  great,  Newport  per- 


1608.]  SURVEY    OF   CHESAPEAKE  BAY.  287 

mitted  Powhatan  to  name  his  own  price  in  corn  for  the  copper  kettles 
and  trinkets  which  he  offered  in  exchange.  The  result  was,  that  the 
confiding  Englishman  got  much  the  worst  of  the  bargain.  But  Smith, 
who  much  better  understood  the  nature  of  the  wily  but  simple  savage, 
presently  restored  the  balance  of  trade  by  displaying  in  the  eyes  of 
the  king  some  blue  beads,  on  which  a  high  price  was  put,  as  precious 
ornaments  worn  only  by  royal  personages.  Corn  fell  to  a  few  beads 
the  bushel,  and  the  visit  was  made  on  the  whole  a  profitable  one  in 
provisions,  and  in  the  establishment,  for  the  present,  of  friendly  rela 
tions  with  the  powerful  chief. 

Smith  passed  the  summer  of  1608  in  two  expeditions  upon  the 
waters  of  Virginia,  making  an  extended  survey  of  Chesa-  smith  makes 
peake  Bay  and  its  tributary  rivers,  of  which  he  drew  a  map  Chesapeake6 
of  remarkable  correctness.  In  the  Potomac  he  was  beset  by  Bay- 
a  band  of  Indians,  who,  if  their  story  could  be  believed,  were  instigated 
through  Powhatan,  by  some  persons  in  Jamestown,  to  cut  off  Smith 
and  his  party.  A  more  dangerous  mishap  befell  him  in  the  same 
river,  where  he  was  stung  by  a  fish  he  calls  a  stingray ;  he  was  thought 
to  be  so  near  death  that  a  grave  was  dug  for  his  burial  on  an  island 
near  by  ;  but  he  recovered  in  time  to  eat  of  the  fish  that  struck  him. 
On  the  second  expedition  the  party  ventured  as  far  as  Sassafras  River, 
not  far  below  the  mouth  of  the  Susquehanna,  where  the  Indians  are 
said  to  have  known  little  of  Powhatan,  except  by  name,  but  who  held 
intercourse  with  the  French  of  Canada  at  a  much  greater  distance. 
These  were  remarkable  voyages  to  be  made  in  open  boats,  into  an  un 
known  country,  constantly  exposed  to  the  inclemencies  of  weather,  the 
possibility  of  an  entire  failure  of  the  means  of  subsistence,  and  the 
attacks  of  hostile  savages.  But  it  is  characteristic  of  the  exaggera 
tion  which  distinguishes  the  Smith  narratives  that  he  is  said  to  have 
sailed  a  distance  of  about  three  thousand  miles  while  absent  from 
Jamestown  only  three  months. 

On  the  return  from  the  last  expedition  early  in  September,  Cap 
tain  Smith  was  made  president  of  the  colony.  Newport  arrived  soon 
after  with  a  second  reinforcement  of  men  and  supplies,  and 

•   11-  i  f  c      i  i  -»*••   j_  First  women 

with  mm  came  the  two  first  women  or  the  colony,  Mistress  join  the  coi- 
Forrest  and  her  maid  Ann  Burras.     The  latter  did  not  wait 
long  for  a  husband,  for  her  marriage  to  John  Laydon  is  announced  a 
few  weeks  later. 

Newport  carne  with  orders  from  the  London  Council  to  bring  home 
a  lump  of  gold,  to  discover  the  passage  to  the  South  Sea,  and 

&  r^  i          ^    i  i         Coronation 

to  find  the  survivors  of  the  Roanoke   Colony.      He  brought  of  POW- 

,,  ,        .  hatan. 

with  him  also  some  "  costly  novelties,    as  a  basin,  a  ewer, 

a  bed  and  some  clothes  for  Powhatan,  with  directions  to  bestow  the 


288 


FIRST  ENGLISH  SETTLEMENT   IN  AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 


ceremony  of  a  coronation  upon  that  naked  monarch.  He  found  neither 
the  lump  of  gold,  the  passage  to  the  Pacific,  nor  any  of  the  survivors 
of  the  Roanoke  massacre  ;  but  he  crowned  the  savage  who  had,  per 
haps,  procured  the  deaths  of  those  unhappy  persons. 

Powhatan,  reminded  of  his  royal  state,  declined  to  go  to  Jamestown 
to  receive  the  presents  when  summoned  thither  by  Smith  as  a  special 
ambassador.  "  I  also  am  a  king,"  he  said ;  and  if  the  King  of  Eng 
land  had  sent  him  gifts,  they  should  be  brought  to  him ;  he  should  not 
go  to  receive  them.  Newport  went,  and  the  gifts  were  accepted  ;  but 


Coronation  of   Powhatan. 


the  coronation  was  a  more  difficult  matter.  No  persuasions  could  in 
duce  the  chief  to  kneel,  and  it  was  only  by  bearing  heavily  upon  his 
shoulders  that  he  could  be  made  to  stoop  so  low  as  to  admit  of  the 
assumption  that  his  posture  was  the  proper  one  for  the  placing  of  a 
crown  upon  his  head.  The  firing  of  a  pistol  as  a  signal  for  a  volley 
from  the  boats  in  honor  of  the  event  startled  him  into  an  attitude  of 
defence  with  the  suspicion  that  he  was  the  victim  of  some  treachery  ; 
but  being  presently  reassured  of  the  entire  sincerity  of  these  proceed 
ings,  he  accepted  them  as  an  acknowledgment  of  his  regal  state,  and 
gave  his  old  moccasins,  the  deer-skin  he  used  for  a  blanket,  and  seven 
or  eight  bushels  of  corn  in  the  ear,  to  the  representatives  of  his  royal 
brother  of  England. 


1608.]  SERVICES   OF    SMITH.  289 

If  Captain  Newport  committed  any  errors  they  were  errors  of  judg 
ment,  or  acts  done  in  obedience  to  orders  from  the  Council  at 
home,  who  held  him  in  deserved  respect  and  confidence.  It  icism  on 
was,  perhaps,  because  of  that  estimation  that  the  jealousy  of 
Smith  was  aroused  against  him.  Newport  is  abused  in  the  "  General 
History,"  after  the  second  visit,  with  almost  as  much  vehemence  and 
rancor  as  Wingfield  and  others  were  before  him.  Smith,  no  doubt, 
understood  better  than  any  of  his  companions,  the  character  of  the  In 
dians  ;  to  him  this  coronation  of  Powhatan  was  an  absurdity,  believ 
ing  their  ends  would  be  more  easily  gained  with  the  chief  by  dealing 
with  him  as  a  wily  but  ignorant  savage  rather  than  as  a  powerful  king. 
A  display  of  strength  wisely  used,  he  thought,  was  more  likely  to 
establish  peaceful  relations  with  the  Indians  than  deprecatory  meas 
ures  and  a  show  of  pretended  respect,  which  the  natives  would  only 
construe  into  an  acknowledgment  of  weakness.  But  he  was  not  con 
tent  with  merely  following  his  own  wiser  conclusions,  both  with  regard 
to  the  Indians  and  the  management  of  his  own  people  ;  he  would  see 
neither  good  intentions  nor  good  results  in  the  actions  of  others.  Had 
he  shown  in  his  own  acts  something  more  of  the  spirit  of  conciliation, 
and  had  he  been  less  severe  to  subordinates  and  less  jealous  of  his 
companions,  his  services,  undoubtedly  great,  would  have  done  much 
more  to  promote  the  secure  establishment  and  welfare  of  the  colony. 

The  chief  merit  of  his  administration  was,  that  he  kept  the  colony 
from  starvation.  It  depended  for  food  mainly  upon  the  In-  Meritg  of 
dians,  for  the  colonists  were  neither  provident  enough,  nor  ^j^ra-*1" 
industrious  enough  to  protect  the  stores  brought  from  Eng-  tlon' 
land,  from  destruction  by  decay,  or  by  the  rats  which  came  in  the  ships 
and  had  also  founded  a  colony.  In  cunning  and  courage  the  Indians 
were  no  match  for  Smith.  He  could  always  persuade  them  to  sell  or 
constrain  them  to  give  him  provisions,  and  there  was  need  enough  for 
all  that  he  could  gather.  He  attempted  to  compel  the  people  to  steady 
labor,  but,  except  when  Newport's  vessels  were  to  be  loaded  for  the  re 
turn  voyage,  without  much  success.  They  would  all  rather  beg  or  buy 
of  the  Indians,  than  plant,  or  fish,  or  hunt,  and  in  spite  of  the  severe 
laws  of  the  president,  would  abandon  the  tasks  to  which  they  were 
put.  Then  a  large  proportion  of  the  colonists  were  considered,  by 
right  of  their  being  "  gentlemen,"  exempt  from  labor.  Two  of  them, 
indeed,  did  go  heartily  to  work  in  felling  trees,  and  were  so  efficient 
that,  it  was  said,  forty  like  them  would  be  worth  a  hundred  common 
laborers.  But  their  example  does  not  seem  to  have  been  followed  by 
others  of  their  class,  who  may  have  been  deterred  partly  by  the  sever 
ity  of  a  regulation  of  the  president's,  that  a  record  should  be  kept  of 
every  oath  uttered  by  men  at  work,  and  for  each  oath  a  can  of  water 


290 


FIRST   ENGLISH  SETTLEMENT   IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 


be  poured  down  the  sleeve  of  the  offender  when  the  day's  work  was 
over. 

Indolence  and  hunger  were  not  the  only  troubles.     Jamestown  was 
in  an  unwholesome  region,  and  deaths  from   the  malaria  of  the  sur- 


^^^  C.Smitk  tOJhant/ie  Kinp,  of  famavnlge pnfoner \  ~l6'o8 

~ 


From  Smith's  "  General  History."      [Fac-simile.] 

rounding  swamps  were  frequent.  Among  those  who  died  was  Captain 
Wynne,  a  member  of  the  council.  Scrivener,  another  of  the  coun 
cil,  Captain  Waldo,  the  commander  of  the  fort  in  Smith's  absence, 
Anthony  Gosnold,  a  brother  of  Bartholomew,  with  eight  others,  were 
drowned  by  the  upsetting  of  a  boat.  The  council  was  thus  reduced 


1609.]  THE  NEW    CHARTER.  291 

to  Smith  alone,  and  the  colony,  if  not  altogether  dependent  upon  him, 
was,  at  least,  under  his  sole  direction.  He  was,  if  we  may  believe 
the  narratives  written  in  his  interest,  quite  equal  to  this  enlarged  re 
sponsibility.  The  Indians  were  as  children  in  his  hands,  whether  in 
negotiation  or  conflict.  One  stalwart  chief  he  seized  by  his  long  hair 
in  the  presence  of  his  tribe  drawn  up  in  battle  array,  with  a  pistol  at 
his  breast  compelled  him  to  submission,  and  led  him  trembling  with 
fear  among  his  people  who  threw  down  their  arms  in  dismay.  On 
another  occasion  he  closed  in  fight  with  the  King  of  Paspahey,  a  giant 
in  strength  and  stature,  who  took  him  up,  and  bore  him  to  the  river 
to  drown  him ;  but  in  the  struggle  in  the  stream,  Smith  —  who  was  a 
small  man  —  at  length  got  such  a  hold  upon  the  throat  of  the  savage 
as  to  nearly  strangle  him,  and  led  him  off  at  last  a  prisoner  to  the  fort. 

His  own  people,  the  president  ruled  with  a  relentless  will,  punishing 
the  idle  and  insubordinate,  threatening  to  hang  the  mutinous,  if  they 
did  not  give  over  their  attempts  to  abandon  the  colony.  Two  or  three 
Dutchmen,  nevertheless,  revolted  from  his  authority,  fled  to  the  In 
dians,  and  entered  into  a  conspiracy  with  Povvhatan  for  the  destruc 
tion  of  Jamestown.  But  Smith  knew  their  plans,  defeated  them, 
and  brought  the  great  chief  himself  into  submission.  In  the  course 
of  these  events  he  was  aided  by  the  little  girl  Pocahontas,  who  some 
times  gave  him  timely  information  of  attempts  to  be  made  upon  his 
life,  and  often  supplied  the  starving  colonists  with  the  needed  sup 
plies. 

But  the  energy  and  services  of  Smith,  whatever  they  really  were, 
could  only  keep  a  feeble  life  in  the  colony.  With  the  mate-  A  new  char. 
rial  of  which  it  was  composed,  it  was  not  possible  to  do  more.  yTr^nfa!6 
The  cost  had  been  great,  and  the  return  almost  nothing  to  ^n?Ma'y, 
the  adventurers  in  England,  and  a  new  charter  with  larger  1609- 
powers  and  privileges  was  asked  for.  It  was  granted  by  James,  and 
dated  the  23d  of  May,  1609.  The  number  of  corporators  was  very 
large,  and  included  the  most  exalted  among  the  nobility,  the  highest 
among  the  clergy,  the  most  distinguished  among  navigators,  the 
wealthiest  among  the  merchants  in  the  kingdom,  as  well  as  all  of  the 
most  influential  guilds  of  London  in  their  corporate  capacity.  The 
boundaries  of  the  land  it  bestowed  upon  the  company,  were  from  two 
hundred  miles  north  to  the  same  distance  south  of  Cape  Comfort,  in 
cluding  all  the  country  between  those  extreme  points,  from  the  Atlantic 
to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  the  islands  within  a  hundred  miles  of  both 
coasts.  A  council,  to  sit  always  in  London,  was  nominated  in  the 
charter,  future  vacancies  in  which  were  to  be  filled  by  the  corporators. 
The  appointment  of  officers  and  enactment  of  laws  for  the  colony 
were  to  be  made  by  this  body,  and  "  for  divers  reasons  and  considera- 


292  FIRST   ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT   IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XL 

tions  "  this  provision  of  the  charter  was  to  take  immediate  effect  on 
the  arrival  in  Virginia  of  a  new  governor.  Smith's  administration 
was  clearly  not  approved  of,  which  cannot  be  wondered  at  when  we 
remember  how  many  of  the  men  whom  he  had  quarrelled  with,  de 
nounced,  and  superseded  had  returned  to  England. 

So  extended  were  the  interests  engaged  in  the  naming  of  the  cor 
porators  under  this  new  charter  that  the  contributions  were  large  to 
carry  on  the  enterprise.     A  fleet  of  nine  ships,  carrying  five 
the  fleet        hundred  people,  was  dispatched  the  latter  part  of  May,  the 
and  somers.   lieutenant-general,  Sir  Thomas  Gates,  the  admiral,  Sir  George 
Somers,  and  the  vice-admiral,  Captain  Newport,  taking  pas 
sage  together  in  one  of  them,  the  Sea  Adventure.     Lord  De  la  Warre 
was  appointed  captain-general,  but  as  he  remained  in  England,   Sir 

Thomas  Gates  was  to  assume  supreme  com- 
niand  on  his  arrival  at  Jamestown.  Among 
the  captains  of  the  fleet  were  Ratcliffe, 
Martin,  and  Archer,  whose  return  to  the 

Signature  of  Sir  Thomas  Gates.  ^^  ^   ^.^  Qf    ^    new   Council    gmith 

might  well  consider  a  reflection  upon  his  administration,  and  an 
answer  to  the  complaints  and  charges  he  had  sent  home.  Among 
the  vessels  was  the  Virginia,  the  first  American  ship,  built  by  the 
people  who  were  sent  out  under  George  Popham  by  the  Council  of 
the  Second  or  Northern  Colony,  two  years  before,  to  make  a  set 
tlement  at  the  mouth  of  the  Sagadahoc  —  the  Kennebec  River  in 
Maine. 

The  fleet  was  dispersed  by  a  storm  soon  after  sailing.  Seven  of 
them  reached  the  Chesapeake  in  August,  in  a  more  or  less  shattered 
condition  ;  of  the  two  that  were  missing,  one  was  a  pinnace,  which 
had  foundered  at  sea,  the  other  the  admiral's  ship,  the  Sea  Adven 
ture,  on  board  which  were  Gates,  Somers,  Newport,  and  William 
Strachey.  She  also  was  supposed  to  be  lost,  for  nothing  was  heard  of 
her  till  the  next  spring. 

Off  the  Bermuda  group  —  "the  still  vexed  Bermooth.es  "  of  Shake 
speare  —  a  storm  had  assailed  the  Sea  Adventure  and  wrecked  her  on 

one  of  those  islands.  It  was  such  a  storm 

'^l^t'&ltTJn.JtToL'C^.bi  as  Shakespeare  describes  in  the  first  act  of 

"  The  Tempest,"  and  to  Strachev's  account 

Signature  of  William    Strachey.  111 

of  it,  it  is  thought  the  dramatist  was  in 
debted  for  his  inspiration.1  Storm  after  storm,  with  fury  added  to 
fury,  each  more  outrageous  than  that  which  went  before,  battered  the 

1  A  True  Repertory  of  the  Wracke,  and  redemption  of  Sir  Thomas  Gates ;  upon  and  from 
the  Hands  of  the  Bermudas,  etc..  etc.  Written  by  William  Strachey,  Esquire.  Purchas, 
vol.  iv.,  lib.  ix.,  chap.  vi. 


1609.] 


TEMPEST  AND    SHIPWRECK. 


293 


doomed  ship,  and  made  her  miserable  people,  says  Strachey,  "  looke 
one  vpon  the  other  with  troubled  hearts,  and  panting  bosoms  :   gtrache  !g 
our  clamors  dround  in  the  windes,  and  the  windes  in  thunder."  th^h?'-01 
There  was  "  nothing  heard  that  could  give  comfort,  nothing  wreck- 
scene  that  might  incourage  hope.     Such  was  the  tumult  of  the  ele 
ments  that  the  Sea  swelled  above  the  Clouds,  and  gave  battell  vnto 
Heaven.       It    could 
not  be  said  to  raine, 
the  waters  like  whole 
Riuers  did   flood   in 

the    ayre 

Windes  and  Seas 
were  as  mad  as  fury 
and  rage  could  make 
them."  The  ship 
sprung  a  leak,  or 
many  leaks  from 
every  joint  almost, 
"  having  spued  out 
her  Oakum,"  and 
this  fresh  calamity, 
the  news  of  which, 
*'  imparting  no  lesse 
terrour  than  danger, 
ranne  through  the 
whole  Ship  with 
much  fright  and 
amazement,"  seemed 
*'  as  a  wound  giuen 
to  men  that  were  be 
fore  dead."  Yet  they 
fought  bravely  for 
their  lives,  passen 
gers  as  well  as  seamen.  "  The  common  sort  stripped  naked,  as  men 
in  Gallies,  the  easier  both  to  hold  out,  and  to  shrinke  from  vnder  the 
salt  water,  which  continually  leapt  in  among  them,  kept  their  eyes 
waking,  and  their  thoughts  and  hands  working,  with  tyred  bodies, 
and  wasted  spirits,  three  dayes  and  foure  nights  destitute  of  outward 
comfort,  and  desperate  of  any  deliuerance,  testifying  how  mutually 
willing  they  were,  yet  by  labour  to  keepe  each  other  from  drowning  ; 
albeit  each  one  drowned  while  he  laboured."  The  heavens  looked  so 
black  upon  them  during  all  this  time,  that  not  a  star  was  seen  by 
night,  nor  the  sun  by  day ;  but  on  the  last  night  of  their  terrible 


Shipwreck  of  the  "  Sea  Adventure." 


294  FIRST   ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT  IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 

struggle  with  the  winds  and  waves,  Sir  George  Somers  saw,  and  called 
others  to  see,  "  an  apparation  of  a  little  round  light,  like  a  faint  Starre, 
trembling  and  streaming  along  with  a  sparkling  blaze,  halfe  the 
height  vpon  the  Maine  Mast,  and  shooting  sometimes  from  Shroud  to 
Shroud,  tempting  to  settle  as  it  were  vpon  any  of  the  foure  Shrouds  : 
and  for  three  or  four  houres  together,  or  rather  more,  halfe  the  night 
it  kept  with  vs,  running  sometimes  along  the  Maine  yard  to  the  very 

end,  and  then  returning but  vpon   a   sodaine,    towards 

the  morning  watch  they  lost  of  it,  and  knew  not  what  way  it  made." 
So  the  boatswain  in  Shakespeare's  "  Tempest  "  heard  the  howlings 
from  within  the  ship,  louder  than  the  weather  :  so  Miranda 

Shake 
speare's         besought  her  wizard  father  to  allay  the  war  of  the  wild  waters, 

when  the  sea  mounted  to  the  sky  and  dashed  the  fire  out,  as 
she  saw  the  brave  ship  dashed  all  to  pieces  ;  so  Ariel  flamed  amaze 
ment,  burning  in  many  places,  on  the  topmast,  the  yards,  the  bowsprit, 
and  then  in  a  deep  nook  safely  harbored  the  king's  ship,  as,  on  the 
morning  of  the  fifth  day,  the  Sea  Adventure  lay  firmly  fixed  and  quiet, 
between  two  rocks  in  still  waters,  under  the  lea  of  the  island. 

On  these  islands  —  henceforth  known  as  the  Somers  Islands  as  well 
as  the  Bermudas,  from  Sir  George  Somers,  and  corrupted  later  into 
Summer  Islands  —  there  was  abundance  of  food,  especially  of  wild 
hogs,  Tor  the  support  of  Gates  and  his  one  hundred  and  fifty  com 
panions,  men,  women,  and  children.  There  was  no  hardship  in  a  win 
ter  in  that  lovely  climate,  and  the  people  were  for  the  most  part  con 
tentedly  employed  in  hunting  and  fishing,  and  in  building  two 
pinnaces  in  which  to  continue  their  voyage.  There  were  deaths,  and 
births,  and  even  marriage  among  them  ;  the  wife  of  "  one  John  Rolfe" 
gave  birth  to  a  daughter  which  was  christened  Bermuda,  and  a  boy 
born  to  another  couple  was  called  Bermudas.  Nor  was  crime  wanting 
in  private  murders  and  public  mutinies,  for  which  there  was  due  pun 
ishment  ;  but,  on  the  whole,  the  winter  passed  pleasantly,  and  in  May 
they  all  embarked  save  two  deserters  and  a  few  who  were  sent  off 
earlier  in  the  long-boat,  and  who,  it  was  afterward  supposed,  reached 
Chesapeake  Bay,  but  were  murdered  when  they  landed  by  some  of 
Powhatan's  people. 

Meanwhile  affairs  at  Jamestown  were  not  prospering.  In  the  ab 
sence  of  the  captain-general,  Sir  Thomas  Gates,  Smith  continued 

president,  for  there  was  no  authority  to  supersede  him.  The 
condition  of  colony  was,  as  usual,  in  a  distracted  condition,  hungry  and 

dependent  for  food  upon  the  Indians.  Martin  was  sent  to 
make  a  settlement  at  Nansemond ;  Captain  West  went  to  the  falls  of 
James  River,  and  Ratcliffe  to  Point  Comfort,  for  the  same  purpose. 
West  bought  of  Powhatan,  for  a  small  quantity  of  copper,  the  country 


1610.]  "  THE    STARVING  TIME."  295 

he  proposed  to  occupy  —  the  region  about  Richmond  —  but  the  good 
will  of  the  Indians  was  secured  neither  by  kindness  nor  by  abstaining 
from  bad  treatment.  The  attempts  to  settle  at  these  new  points  were 
unsuccessful ;  half  the  men  were  killed,  and  among  them  Captain 
Ratcliffe.  While  West  was  at  the  falls,  Smith  went  to  his  assistance, 
and  met  with  an  accident  which  put  an  end  to  his  career  in  Virginia. 
By  an  explosion  of  gunpowder  in  his  boat,  he  was  so  burned  and 
maimed  that  it  was  necessary  he  should  go  to  England  for  surgical  aid, 
and  he  sailed  soon  after  with  the  returning  fleet.1 

Percy  succeeded  him  in  the  presidency,  but  he  was  capable  neither 
of  maintaining  harmony  among  the  leading  men,  nor  even  Ge0rge  Per- 
that  degree  of  limited  prosperity  among  the  people,  which  to  tSheCpres8i- 
existed  under  Smith.  The  late  president  had  been  so  far  deucy- 
able  to  compel  the  colonists  to  labor  during  the  past  summer,  that  the 
autumn  brought  them  a  considerable  harvest ;  the  swine  and  other 
animals  had  increased  in  num- 
bers,  and  the  people  generally 
were  in  good  health.  Whatever  £/  I 

may  have  been  the  severity  of  his 

,        . ,  ,  ,  -.  -,  Signature  of  George  Percy. 

rule,  it  produced  good  results,  and 

was  probably  no  harsher  than  was  necessary  among  men  described  as 
a  "  lewd  company,  wherein  were  many  unruly  gallants  packed  thither 
by  their  friends  to  escape  ill  destinies,"  and  as  "men  of  such  distem 
pered  bodies  and  infected  minds,  whom  no  examples  daily  before  their 
eyes,  either  of  goodnesse  or  punishment  can  deter  from  their  habitual 
impieties,  or  terrify  from  a  shameful  death."  Before  the  return  of 
spring,  improvidence,  idleness,  and  debauchery  had  done  their  work. 
The  store  of  provisions  which  Smith  had  gathered  from  the  harvest 
and  from  the  Indians,  the  domestic  animals,  which  had  been  carefully 
preserved  for  their  natural  increase,  were  all  speedily  consumed ; 
hunger,  despair,  and  death  followed,  and  the  winter  was  recorded  in 
the  annals  of  the  colony,  as  "  the  starving  time."  When  Gates  arrived 
in  May,  of  the  five  hundred  whom  Smith  had  left  at  Jamestown  six 
months  before,  only  sixty  were  alive. 

1  It  is  said  in  the  Relation  of  Virginia,  by  Henry  Spellman,  1609  —  recently  recovered 
and  published  in  London  (1872) — that  Captain  Smith  sold  Spellman  toPowhatan  for  this 
land  on  the  James,  and  required  West  to  settle  upon  it.  But  that  Captain  West,  "having 
bestowed  cost  to  begine  a  toune  in  another  place  misliked  it."  That  thereupon  unkindness 
arose  between  them ;  Captain  Smith  saying  little  at  the  time,  but  afterwards  conspiring 
with  Powhatan  to  kill  Captain  West.  "Which  plotte,"  adds  Spellman,  "tooke  but  smale 
effect,  for  in  the  meane  time  Capt.  Smith  was  Aprehended  and  sent  abord  for  England." 
This  Spellman  is  well  known  to  have  been  a  captive  for  some  years  among  the  Indians. 

John  Redclyffe  also  wrote,  October  4,  1609,  to  the  Earl  of  Salisbury,  that  Smith  was  sent 
home  to  answer  to  some  misdemeanors.  Sainsbury  State  Papers,  quoted  in  Neill's  History 
of  the  Virginia  Company. 


296  FIRST   ENGLISH  SETTLEMENT  IN  AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 

When  Gates  landed,  he  entered  the  church  and  ordered  the  bell 
to  be  rung  as  a  summons  to  the  people,  and  as  many  as 
Gates,  the  could  of  the  sixty  miserable  survivors  crawled  out  to  wel- 
generai0'  come  him.  Service  was  first  held  in  "  zealous  and  sorrowful 
prayer,"  and  then  Percy  delivered  up  to  him  the  old  patent, 
his  own  commission,  and  the  seal  of  the  council.  Gates  went  out  to 
look  at  the  seat  of  his  new  government.  It  was  a  scene  of  desolation. 
The  palisades  were  torn  down ;  the  ports  stood  wide  open  ;  the  gates 
were  broken  from  their  hinges  ;  the  empty  houses  of  the  dead  had  been 
dismantled  for  fire-wood,  —  those  who  were  alive  being  too  weak  or 
too  indolent  to  go  to  the  forest  near  by  for  fuel,  or  too  much  afraid  to 
venture  far  from  the  Block  House,  not  knowing  when  or  where  to  look 
for  the  arrows  or  the  tomahawks  of  Indians  lurking  in  the  woods. 

The  governor  was  satisfied  in  the  course  of  a  week,  that  the  one 
wise  thing  to  do  was  to  abandon  Jamestown  with  all  possible  speed, 
and  get  to  some  place  where  they  might  hope  to  be  saved  from  starva 
tion.  From  the  Indians  nothing  could  be  looked  for  but  the  most 
determined  hostility ;  the  store  of  provisions  brought  from  the  Ber 
mudas  could  be  made  to  last  only  a  few  days  longer,  and  it  was  de 
termined,  therefore,  to  sail  for  Newfoundland,  where  there  would  be 
English  vessels  from  which  assistance  could  be  obtained.  Accord 
ingly,  on  the  7th  of  June,  just  a  fortnight  after  the  arrival  of  Gates, 
the  whole  company  embarked  on  two  vessels  he  found  in  port  and  the 
two  built  in  Bermuda,  the  president  himself  being  the  last  to  go  on 
board,  that  he  might  save  the  fort  and  houses  from  destruction,  as 
some  of  the  more  desperate  had  determined  to  celebrate  their  depar 
ture  by  a  conflagration. 

It  was  fortunate  that  he  took  this  precaution.  As  the  ships  lay  at 
Lord  De  la  anchor  the  next  day  in  the  lower  part  of  the  river,  waiting 
arrivesS0fiffet  ^or  *ne  e^b  tide,  the  governor's  vessel  was  boarded  by  a 
fo°rtlt  C°m  boat  from  seaward.  It  was  one  sent  in  advance  by  Lord  De 
June,  i6io.  la  Warre,  who  had  arrived  at  Point  Comfort,  where  he  had 
heard  of  Gates'  decision,  and  hastened  to  send  orders  to  intercept  him. 

The  news  was  received  gladly  by 
Gates  ;  the  tide  which  had  prevented 
the  vessels  getting  out  to  sea  was 
taken  advantage  of  to  return  to 
Jamestown,  and  that  night  the  col 
onists  were  back  again  under  the 
shelter  of  their  old  quarters,  which 

Signature  of  Lord  Delaware  (Tho.  La  Warre).  Q^g    had    gaved    fr()m    destruction. 

Two  days  later  De  la  Warre  also  brought  his  three  ships  to  anchor 
opposite  the  fort  and  went  ashore. 


1610.] 


OPPORTUNE   COMING   OF  DE   LA   WARRE. 


297 


As  he  landed  he  fell  upon  his  knees  and  engaged  in  silent  prayer. 
A  procession,  dignified  but  ragged,  ceremonies  more  imposing  in  in 
tention  than  in  fact,  awaited  him,  as  he  arose ;  in  prayer  and  in  ser 
mon,  his  coming  was  welcomed  ;  his  commission  as  captain-general  was 
read,  and  with  parchments  and  seal.  Sir  Thomas  Gates  surrendered 
into  his  hands  the  colony  which  he  had  governed  a  fortnight.  Then 
in  a  timely  speech,  De  la  Warre  rebuked  the  idleness  and 
other  shortcomings  of  the  past,  warning  his  hearers  that  he  measures  of 
held  the  sword  of  justice  in  his  hands,  which  would  certainly 
be  drawn  if  occasion  called  for  it,  but  encouraging  them  also  with  as 
surances  of  the  good  store  of  provisions  with  which  his  ships  were 
laden. 

There  was  food  enough  on  hand  to  last  for  a  year,  but  De  la  Warre 


Arrival  of  De  la  Warre. 

was  mindful  of  the  future. 
He  immediately  dispatched 
Sir  George  Somers  and  Captain  Argall 
to  the  Bermudas,  to  bring  off  some  of 
the  wild  swine  with  which  those  islands  abounded,  to  replace  the  stock 
which  the  colonists  had  eaten  up  the  previous  winter.  Both  these  ves 
sels  were  driven  northward  by  stress  of  weather,  and  Argall  returned 
to  Virginia ;  Somers  reached  the  Bermudas,  but  soon  after  died  there, 
and  his  nephew,  who  succeeded  to  the  command  of  his  vessel,  returned 
to  England.  In  Virginia,  De  la  Warre  was  more  fortunate.  Argall 
was  successfully  employed  in  trading  with  the  natives  for  corn  ;  two 
forts  were  built  near  the  mouth  of  the  James,  and  another  at  the  falls  ; 
the  Indians  were  brought  into  more  peaceful,  if  not  more  friendly 


298  FIRST   ENGLISH    SETTLEMENT   IN  AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 

relations,  by  force  of  arms,  however,  rather  than  by  conciliatory  meas 
ures  ;  and  something  like  order  and  industry  was  enforced  among  the 
colonists.  On  the  whole,  the  administration  of  De  la  Warre  was  more 
successful  than  that  of  his  predecessors  ;  but  it  lasted  only  a  year,  when 
failing  health  compelled  him  to  return  to  England,  leaving  Percy 
again  governor. 

Four  years  had  passed  away  since  Newport  first  sailed  up  the  Pow- 
New  im-  hatan  and  landed  the  first  comers,  and  public  enthusiasm  in 
coionizl°  ^ne  "action," —  as  these  attempts  at  colonization  were  called 
in  the  language  of  the  time,  as  in  ours  we  say  "  an  enter 
prise," —  needed  new  impulses.  Zealous  divines  preached  eloquent 
sermons  in  the  pulpits  of  London,  and  the  Council  plied  the  public 
with  pamphlets.  Gold  mines  and  the  South  Sea,  were  still  occasion 
ally  held  out  as  possible  discoveries  ;  but  the  true  value  of  Virginia,  the 
mildness  of  its  climate,  the  fertility  of  its  soil,  the  magnificence  of  its 
rivers,  the  value  of  its  timber  and  other  natural  products,  its  fitness 
generally  for  the  home  of  civilized  men,  were  coming  to  be  better 
understood,  and  the  dream  of  a  repetition  of  Spanish  experience  farther 
south  faded  into  dimness.  The  Council  had  to  contend  with  doubt  and 
indifference,  the  natural  result  of  the  mistakes  and  disasters  of  these 
first  four  years.  The  return  of  De  la  Warre  was  depressing,  —  for 
much  depended  upon  his  success,  —  until  he  could  publicly  explain 
the  details  of  the  sickness  that  made  it  necessary  ;  how  ague  seized 
him  followed  by  dysentery,  to  that  succeeding  cramps,  to  them  the 
gout,  and  to  the  gout  scurvy,  till  one  wonders  that  he  escaped  at  all, 
and  can  better  understand  the  malarial  influences  with  which  these 
first  settlers  contended,  and  which  carried  them  off  so  rapidly. 

But  fortunately  before  his  arrival  two  fresh  expeditions  had  sailed 
for  Virginia,  one  under  Sir  Thomas  Gates,  —  whom  De  la  Warre  had 
sent  home  for  assistance,  —  the  other  under  Sir  Thomas  Dale.  Both 
were  amply  provided  with  men,  with  supplies,  and  with  domestic  ani 
mals.  The  lessons  of  four  years  of  experience  had  not  been  lost,  and 
the  colony  began  at  last  to  achieve  some  degree  of  prosperity. 

Dale  arrived  in  May,  1611.     He  was  wise  as  well  as  energetic,  and 

set  himself  to  cure,  by  something  better  than  threats  and  ex- 
sir  Thomas      ,  .  t       •  vt  *  11  i       e  ]        l         • 

Dale  com-  hortations,  the  idleness  or  a  people  whom  he  round  relapsing 
Virginia.  again  into  want  and  suffering,  while  they  amused  themselves 
with  playing  bowls  in  the  streets  of  Jamestown.  He  gave 
to  each  man  three  acres  of  cleared  ground  to  cultivate  for  his  own  sup 
port  and  took  away  from  him  the  dependence  upon  the  public  store 
for  food.  The  result  justified  his  expectations,  and  three  men  did 
more  work  under  the  new  rule  than  thirty  did  under  the  old.  There 
was  an  incentive  to  labor  in  the  appeal  to  self-interest,  for  he  who 


1611. J 


ADMINISTRATION    OF   GATES    AND   DALE. 


299 


was  idle  was  very  likely  to  starve.  Tracts  of  corn-land,  surrounded 
by  palisades  and  protected  by  a  block-house,  appeared  in  various 
places  ;  a  beginning  was  really  made  in  the  settlement  of  the  country 
under  the  influence  of  steady  industry. 

Gates  followed  Dale  in  August,  and  superseded  him  for  the  time 
being,  in  the  government  of  the  colony,  but  seconded  his  wise  efforts 
to  bring  about  a  reform  in  the  habits  of  the  people.     A  new  NeWsettie- 
settlement  was  made,  and  a  town  called  Henrico  in  honor  of  ments- 
Prince  Henry,  was  built  a  few  miles  below  the  falls  of  the   James, 


The  Idle  Colonists. 


on  the  extreme  end  of  what  is  now  known  as  Farrar's  Island ;  and  a  few 
months  later,  another  town  was  begun  at  the  mouth  of  the  Appomattox, 
and  named  Bermuda  City.  Both  sites  were  elevated  and  healthful ; 
the  clearing  and  inclosing  of  lands  for  plantations,  the  laying  out  of 
streets,  the  building  of  houses,  gave  employment  to  idle  hands.  Hope 
and  energy  were  aroused  in  men  who  would  gradually  become  good 
and  self-sustaining  citizens  in  the  prospect  of  homes  of  their  own,  and 
in  ceasing  to  be  paupers  dependent  for  subsistence  upon  public  stores 
brought  from  England,  and  upon  corn  bought  at  the  public  expense  or 
stolen  from  the  Indians.  The  foundation  of  the  future  state  was  at  last 
firmly  laid  in  the  idea  of  the  welfare  of  each  individual  member  of  the 
community.  Not  that  the  change  was  immediate  :  it  was  not  easy  to 
alter  a  condition  of  things  which  had  continued  for  several  years,  and 


300  FIRST  ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT   IN  AMERICA.       [CHAP.  XI. 

the  old  system  of  support  from  the  public  store  was  still  adhered  to 
with  regard  to  new  comers  for  a  certain  period  after  their  arrival.  It 
was,  nevertheless,  the  beginning  of  a  new  state  of  affairs,  and  the  be 
ginning  of  anything  like  a  hopeful  prosperity. 

It  was  not  easy,  however,  for  the  Council  in  London  to  look  upon 

these  emigrants  as  a  body  of  Englishmen  capable  of  being  governed  by 

the  same  laws    and  influenced    by  the    same  motives    and 

Code  of  laws  .  _  J 

for  the          habits  to  which  they  were  accustomed  at  home.     A  code  of 

colony .  " 

pains  and  penalties  for  crime  was  sent  out,  under  which  they 
were  to  live,  drawn  not  from  the  common  law  and  statutes  of  England 
but  taken  from  the  martial  laws  of  the  Low  Countries.1  The  penalty 
was  death  for  blaspheming  God ;  for  speaking  "  impiously  or  mali 
ciously  "  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  collectively  or  individually  ;  for  any 
word  or  act  in  derision  or  in  despite  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  ;  for 
traitorous  words  against  the  king  ;  for  murder,  for  adultery,  for  rape, 
whether  of  white  or  Indian;  for  perjury,  or  bearing  false  witness  ; 
for  trading  with  the  Indians  without  a  license  ;  for  embezzlement  of 
the  public  goods  ;  for  desertion  of  the  colony,  for  treason  or  misprision 
of  treason  against  it  or  its  rulers ;  for  ordinary  theft ;  for  robbing  a 
garden,  wilfully  pulling  up  a  flower,  a  root,  or  herb  when  set  to  weed 
ing  ;  for  gathering  grapes,  or  plucking  ears  of  corn,  whether  belonging 
to  a  private  person  or  the  public.  He  who  used  profane  swearing,  tak 
ing  the  name  of  God  in  vain  or  by  other  oaths,  had  a  bodkin  thrust 
through  his  tongue  for  the  second  time  offending,  and  the  third  time  suf 
fered  death ;  the  penalty  for  absence  from  public  worship,  or  violating 
the  Sabbath,  was  deprivation  of  a  week's  allowance,  public  whipping, 
and  if  three  times  repeated,  death ;  slander  of  the  councillors  or  other 
principal  officers  of  the  colony,  evil  speaking  of  the  colony  itself,  or  of 
books  written  on  its  behalf,  were  punished  by  whipping,  and  by  the 
galleys  for  three  years,  and  by  death  for  the  third  offence  ;  disobedi 
ence  of  the  magistrates  carried  the  same  penalties,  and  he  who  un 
worthily  demeaned  himself  to  any  minister  or  preacher  was  publicly 
whipped  three  times,  and  compelled  to  ask  forgiveness  of  the  congre 
gation  for  three  successive  Sundays ;  to  kill  any  domestic  animal,  any 
poultry,  or  even  a  dog,  though  they  might  be  one's  own,  without  per 
mission,  was  punished  as  a  capital  crime  in  the  principal,  and  he  who 
assisted  him  was  to  lose  his  ears  and  be  branded  in  the  hand  ;  those 
who  failed  to  keep  their  houses  neat  and  clean,  whose  bedsteads  were 
not  three  feet  from  the  ground,  and  who  threw  foul  water  into  the 
streets,  were  subject  to  trial  by  court-martial ;  a  tradesman  who 
neglected  his  business  was  sent  to  the  galleys  for  four  years  if  he  per 
sisted  in  the  offense  ;  if  he  or  any  soldier  failed  to  appear  at  his  ap- 

1  Stith's  History  of  Virginia,  p.  122. 


1611.]  TOBACCO.  301 

pointed  work  at  beat  of  drum,  morning  and  afternoon,  or  left  his 
work  before  the  hour  appointed,  he  was  laid  "  head  and  heels  to 
gether  "  all  night  upon  the  guard,  for  the  first  offence,  for  the  second 
whipped,  for  the  third  sent  to  the  galleys  ;  whoever  failed  to  render  to 
the  minister  an  account  of  his  faith,  or  refused  to  take  advice  from  him 
touching  matters  of  religion,  was  whipped  daily  till  he  repented  of  his 
obduracy  ;  public  "  launderer  or  launderesses,"  bakers,  cooks,  and 
fishermen  were  kept  to  a  faithful  discharge  of  their  duties  by  similar 
penalties,  and  the  minister  or  preacher  who  neglected  to  read  publicly 
on  every  Sabbath  day  the  laws  and  ordinances,  of  whi-  V.  we  give  this 
brief  abstract,  was  deprived  for  a  week  of  his  allowance  irom  the  public 
store.  But  this  was  only  the  civil  code.  To  the  martial  law,  the 
pains  and  penalties  of  which  were  much  more  severe,  and  the  possi 
ble  offences  more  minute  and  varied,  the  citizens  were  also  amenable. 

If  there  was  want  of  good  order  and  good  government,  it  was  not 
for  lack  of  authority  in  the  hand  of  the  magistrates.  The  increasing 
prosperity  of  the  colony,  however,  in  the  administration  of  affairs  by 
Gates  and  by  Dale,  owed  little  to  the  severity  of  the  laws.  The  al 
lotments  of  lands,  first  made  by  Dale,  were  increased  after  the  expira 
tion  by  limitation  of  the  system  of  a  common  support  and  a  common 
interest  in  the  colony.  There  gradually  grew  up  along  the  James  and 
some  of  its  tributaries  a  settled,  though  scattered  community  of  plant 
ers,  dependent  on  their  own  industry  for  their  support,  free  from 
the  evil  associations  and  habits  engendered  in  the  earlier  days  of 
Jamestown. 

From  gaining  a  subsistence  it  was  an  easy  step  to  the  accumu 
lation  of  a  surplus ;  before  the  expiration  of  the  first  decade  of  the 
colony,  the  London  Council  began  the  granting  of  patents  of  large 
tracts  of  land  to  individuals,  and  such  tracts  were  also  given  to  colonists 
for  meritorious  services.  The  planting  of  tobacco  was  soon 

Culture  and 

found  to  yield  a  far  more  profitable  harvest  than  the  sowing  of   export  of 

f  •  tobacco. 

corn,  so  profitable,  indeed,  that  it  was  necessary  ere  long  to 
regulate  by  law  the  proportion  of  ground  sowed  for  profit,  and  for  food. 
From  a  fashion  of  the  court,  introduced  by  Raleigh,  the  use  of  tobacco 
had  become  so  common  in  England,  that  the  cheaper  staple  of  Virginia 
found  a  market  where  there  was  no  demand  for  the  dearer  product  of 
the  Spanish  colonies.  In  1614  a  member  of  Parliament  said  in  a 
speech  in  the  House :  "  Many  of  the  divines  now  smell  of  tobacco  ; 
and  poor  men  spend  4d.  of  their  day's  wages  at  night  in  smoke."1 
The  increasing  consumption  greatly  alarmed  the  king  for  the  morals 
of  his  subjects,  who  were  deaf  equally  to  his  arguments  and  his 
remonstrances ;  but  his  fears  for  morality  gave  way  to  apprehensions 

1  Neill's  History  of  the  Virginia  Company. 


302  FIRST    ENGLISH   SETTLEMENT   IN   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 

in  later  years  of  loss  to  the  revenue.  Taxes  and  restrictions  upon 
sales  which  the  charter  did  not  warrant,  impelled  the  planters  to  look 
for  a  market  in  Holland.  But  a  prerogative  of  the  crown  was  not 
to  be  sacrificed  to  the  prosperity  of  the  colony,  and  this  first  dispute 
between  it  and  the  king  was  only  settled  by  a  compromise  which  sent 
all  Virginia  tobacco  to  England  for  exportation,  but  gave  a  monopoly 
of  the  trade  to  the  Company. 

This  settlement,  however,  of  the  various  questions  to  which  this 
important  trade  gave  rise  was  not  reached  till  after  discussions  and 
difficulties  protracted  for  a  period  of  years,  during  which  the  colony 
was  gradually  growing  to  wealth  and  power.  At  the  outset  the  cul 
tivation  of  tobacco  was  so  lucrative  that  those  who  had  no  land  planted 
in  the  streets  of  Jamestown,  and  those  who  had  were  necessarily  re 
strained  by  law,  from  running  the  risk  of  starvation  by  planting  it  all 
in  tobacco,  and  none  in  corn.  This  profitableness  of  the  crop,  as  it 
was  found  to  continue,  made  the  larger  tracts  of  land  desirable,  but 
the  land  was  useless  without  laborers. 

The  future  of  Virginia  —  and  with  hers,  that  of  all  that  portion  of 
Supply  of  the  country  where  one  or  two  great  staples  could  be  produced 
theTofony*  at  an  enormous  profit  —  was  determined  by  these  considera- 
First  slaves,  ^ions.  Men  held  to  service  for  a  term  of  years  were  brought 
over  from  England  by  ship-loads.  These  were  often  convicted  felons, 
often  paupers  who  sold  themselves  in  the  extremity  of  want,  or  were 
sold  to  be  got  rid  of,  and  were  often  unfortunate  wretches  kidnapped 
without  regard  to  their  condition,  and  in  defiance  of  the  law.  On 
each  laborer  brought  into  the  colony  there  was  a  bounty  in  land,  and 
to  his  owner  he  represented  also  a  certain  profit  in  tobacco.  So  far  as 
these  people  themselves  were  concerned  they  were,  from  training  and 
habit,  the  least  desirable  population  of  a  new  country,  in  which  they 
were  to  be,  after  a  term  of  service  as  slaves,  the  free  citizens  ;  but  a 
worse  result  followed,  for  the  circumstances  that  made  their  servitude 
profitable,  made  it  also  the  forerunner  of  a  system  still  more  perni 
cious,  and  of  the  evils  of  which  there  was  no  possible  mitigation. 
When,  in  1619,  a  Dutch  ship  arrived  at  Jamestown  with  a  cargo  of 
negroes  from  the  coast  of  Guinea,  they  were  eagerly  welcomed  at  good 
prices  by  the  planters.  For  many  years  these  two  systems  of  slavery 
existed  side  by  side,  till  the  obvious  truth  became  firmly  established 
that  it  was  more  desirable  to  own  a  black  man  in  fee  simple  than  a 
white  man  for  a  limited  period. 

Before  the  colony,  however,  became  the  object  of  earnest  attention 
as  a  source  of  wealth  in  the  production  of  one  great  staple,  the  inter 
est  in  it  was  kept  alive  by  other  events.  A  third  charter  was  granted 
in  March,  1611-12,  which  included  the  Bermudas  within  the  territory 


1616.] 


MARRIAGE   OF   POCAHONTAS. 


303 


of  the  Company  —  sold  soon  after  to  another  corporation  ;  the  privilege 
of  establishing  a  lottery  was  also  given.  Before  this  was  revoked 
three  years  afterward  by  Parlia 
ment,  as  unconstitutional  and  in 
jurious  to  public  morals,  it  had 
added  nearly  thirty  thousand 
pounds  to  the  treasury  of  the 
Council.  In  1616,  public  curi 
osity  was  aroused  by  the  appear 
ance  in  London,  of  the  Princess 
Pocahontas  as  the  wife  of  Mr. 
John  Rolfe,  who  was  also  distin 
guished  as  the  first  cultivator  of 
tobacco  in  Virginia.1 

Rolfe,  it  seems,  was  a  widower,2 
who  was  one  of  the  company  of 
Sir  Thomas  Gates,  and  was  the 
father  of  the  child  born  in  the  Ber 
mudas,  at  the  time  of  the  wreck 
of  the  Sea  Adventure,  and  chris 
tened  Bermuda.  In  an  expedition 
up  the  Potomac,  in  search  of  corn,  Pocahontas. 

Captain  Argall  had  engaged  an  Indian  to  entice  Pocahontas  on  board 
his  vessel,  whom  he  took  with  him  to  Jamestown,  and  detained  in  the 
expectation  of  compelling  Powhatan  to  exchange  her  for  Marriageo{ 
corn  and  for  certain  Englishmen  and  English  arms,  held  by  andnp^-fe 
that  chief.  While  held  as  a  prisoner,  under  the  care  of  Sir  hontas- 
Thomas  Dale,  she  became  a  Christian,  and  was  received  into  the 
church  under  the  baptismal  name  of  the  Lady  Rebecca.  Whether 
the  acquaintance  between  Rolfe  and  the  princess  commenced  at  that 
time,  is  not  certain  ;  but  they  were  married  soon  after.  Dale  was  so 
much  interested  in  this  comely  daughter  of  Powhatan  that  he  pro 
posed  to  the  king  to  send  him  a  younger  sister,  of  whose  attractions  he 
had  heard,  proposing  to  make  her,  said  the  messenger,  "  his  nearest 
companion,  wife,  and  bed-fellow."  The  offer  could  only  have  been 
made  to  get  possession  of  the  girl ;  wife  she  could  not  be,  as  there  was 
already  a  Lady  Dale  in  England.  The  king  may  have  seen  through 
the  design  ;  at  any  rate  he  good-naturedly  declined  the  proposed  honor 
of  surrendering  his  daughter  to  be  the  mistress  of  even  a  white 
governor. 

1  Harmor's  True  Discourse  of  the  Present  State  of  Virginia. 

2  Pocahontas  was  also  a  widow  if  Strachey's  statement  was  correct  that  she  had  married 
a  "  private  captain  called  Kocoum." 


304 


FIRST   ENGLISH  SETTLEMENT   IN  AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XI. 


Dale  took  Rolfe  and  his  wife  to  England,  and  with  them  went  sev 
eral  other  young  Indians,  men  and  women,  and  one  Tamocomo,  the 
husband  of  another  of  Powhatan's  daughters.  The  young  people  were 
under  the  guardianship  of  the  Council,  and  to  be  educated  as  Chris 
tians  ;  but  Tamocomo  was  an  emissary  of  his  father-in-law,  under  or 
ders  to  gather  information  in  regard  to  the  English  people.  His  ob 
servations  may  have  been  valuable,  but  he  soon  gave  over  an  attempt 


Presentation  of  Pocahontas  at  Court. 

to  take  a  census  of  the  population  by  notches  on  a  stick.  The  whole 
Pocahontas  party  excited  the  liveliest  curiosity.  The  Lady  Rebecca  was 
m  England.  receive(j  a^  court  with  great  favor,  though  grave  doubts  were 
entertained,  suggested  it  was  supposed  by  James,  who  was  never  un 
mindful  of  the  divine  right  of  kings,  whether  Rolfe  had  not  been  guilty 
of  treason  in  presuming  to  make  an  alliance  with  a  royal  family.  The 
princess  appeared  at  the  theatres  and  other  public  places,  everywhere 
attracting  great  attraction  as  the  daughter  of  the  Virginian  emperor, 
and  as  one  to  whom  the  colonists  had  sometimes  been  indebted  for 


1619.]  SANDYS   AND   YEARDLEY.  305 

signal  services ;  and  everywhere  exciting  admiration  for  her  personal 
graces,  and  the  propriety  and  good  sense  with  which  she  always  con 
ducted  herself.  She  remained  in  England  for  nearly  a  year,  and  died 
as  she  was  about  to  sail  for  her  native  country.  Her  only  child,  a 
son,  is  claimed  as  the  ancestor  of  some  of  the  most  respectable  families 
of  Virginia. 

Alliances  by  marriage  between  the  whites  and  Indians  were  encour 
aged  and  were  not  infrequent,  as  it  was  hoped  to  establish  by  such  con 
nections  more  friendly  relations  with  the  savages.  They  had,  no 
doubt,  some  influence,  the  marriage  of  Pocahontas  especially  leading  to 
a  treaty  with  Powhatan  which  he  faithfully  observed  so  long  as  he 
lived,  and  which  was  renewed  after  his  death,  in  1618,  by  his  successor. 
Meanwhile  Dale  was  succeeded  in  the  government  of  the  colony,  first 
by  George  Yeardley,  then  by  Captain  Argall,  and  again  by  Yeardley. 
During  Dale's  administration,  Argall,  who  was  of  an  adventurous  and 
unscrupulous  disposition,  had  won  notoriety,  i£  not  distinc 
tion,  by  the  destruction  of  a  little  colony  of  French  at  Port  ministra- 
Royal  in  the  Bay  of  Fundy.  As  governor  he  was  more 
diligent  in  the  pursuit  of  his  own  interests,  than  in  any  care  for  the 
welfare  of  the  colony.  The  complaints  against  him  were  so  loud  and 
bitter  as  to  demand  reparation  at  the  hands  of  the  Council  in  London, 
while  he  was  also  called  to  account  for  the  neglect  and  ruin  which  had 
fallen  upon  those  plantations  which  it  was  his  duty  to  have  worked  on 
behalf  of  the  Company.  Lord  De  la  Warre  was  sent  out  to  displace 
him  and  correct  these  abuses,  but  died  on  the  way,  somewhere,  it  is 
supposed,  near  the  mouth  of  the  bay  since  known  as  the  Delaware. 
Yeardley,  who  meanwhile  had  returned  to  England,  was  made  cap 
tain-general  and  ordered  to  Virginia. 

The  appointment  in  1619  of  Sir  George  Yeardley  —  for  he  was  now 
knighted  —  as  president,  was  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in 

^    \-    <-  t    -IT"       •     •  /-kU,  U    J    U  U  Sir  George 

the  history  or   Virginia.     Others  had  been  as  honest,  ener-  Yeardley  ap- 

,,  *i-ii  i  «          i      •         {v  pointed  gov- 

getic,  and  clear-sighted  as  he,  and  as  earnest  in  their  ettorts  ernor,  and 
on  behalf  of  the  "  action."     But  he  reaped  the  benefit  of  all  Sandys 
that  they  had  done  and  had,  besides,  the  advantage,  which 
they  often  wanted,  of  being  sustained  by  a  wise  conduct  of  affairs  in 
England.     Sir  Thomas  Smith,  who  from  the  beginning  had  been  the 
treasurer  of  the  company  in  London  with  almost  plenary  powers,  re 
tired  from  office  this  same  year,  and  his  place  was  supplied   by  Sir 
Edwin  Sandys.     Smith  had  been  accused  of  mismanagement,  and  his 
accounts  were  in  some  disorder,  but  his  reputation  at  the  time  evi 
dently  suffered  no  serious  injury,  as  on  his  retiring,  a  grant  of  two 
thousand   acres   of  land  in  Virginia  was  made  him  by  the  London 
Council.     He  had  had  many  obstacles  to  encounter  in  the  raising  and 


306  FIRST   ENGLISH    SETTLEMENT   IN  AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XL 

disbursements  of  means  to  found  a  distant  colony  in  an  unknown  re 
gion,  and  had  done,  perhaps,  all  that  could  be  done  in  the  first  twelve 
years.  The  earlier  difficulties  were  overcome  when  affairs  came  into 
the  hands  of  Sandys  and  Yeardley,  and  to  achieve  success  was  a  much 
easier  task. 

When  Yeardley  arrived  in  Virginia  the  colony  numbered  about  six 
hundred  persons.  They  had  become  discouraged  and  discontented 
under  the  arbitrary  and  dishonest  rule  of  Argall,  were  suffering  from 
a  scarcity  of  food,  having  neglected  the  cultivation  of  maize,  that  they 
might  raise  the  more  tobacco  and  acquire  the  means  to  return  to  Eng 
land.  To  induce  and  even  to  compel  them  to  raise  more  to  eat  and 
less  to  sell,  was  the  governor's  first  object,  and  he  observed  his  own 
laws  by  planting  corn  on  the  Company's  lands,  and  writing  the  treas 
urer  in  London  that  he  must  not  expect  remittances  in  tobacco  for  at 
least  a  year.  To  restore  confidence  among  the  colonists  and  to  assure 
them  of  a  guaranty  for  the  future,  he  gave  to  them  the  power  of  self- 
government,  to  a  certain  extent,  by  calling  upon  them  to  send  repre 
sentatives  from  each  of  the  towns,  hundreds,  or  plantations  to  meet 
with  the  governor  and  council  and  decide  upon  all  matters  relating  to 
the  colony.  The  governor  was  to  have  a  veto  upon  their  legislation, 
and  no  laws  were  valid  till  approved  by  the  Company  at  home.  With 
this  power  of  government  came  the  sense  of  possession  and  perma 
nency,  undoubtedly  exercising  a  strong  influence  over  the  minds  of  the 
colonists.  Sir  Edwin  Sandys  proposed  to  create  a  more  complicated 
form  of  government,  but  this  germ  of  the  future  commonwealth,  in  a 
house  of  representative  burgesses,  was  left  for  a  time  to  a  natural 
growth.  The  first  legislative  assembly  met  in  the  church  at  James 
town,  on  the  30th  of  July,  1619,  and  consisted  of  twenty-two  repre 
sentatives  and  the  governor  and  council.  One  of  the  acts  passed  at 
this  meeting  was  for  the  punishment  of  drunkenness. 

In  this  first  year  of  Yeardley 's  administration,  the  loss  by  death  to 
Process  of  tne  colony  was  three  hundred.  By  the  special  order  of  the 
the  colony.  king?  fa  number  was  increased  by  the  transportation  of  one 
hundred  felons  gathered  from  the  jails  of  England.  These  misfortunes 
were  offset  by  the  wisdom  of  Sandys.  Ten  thousand  acres  of  land 
were  set  apart  at  Henrico,  for  the  foundation  of  a  university,  where 
both  Indians  and  whites  were  to  be  educated,  and  within  two  years  a 
hundred  men  were  settled  upon  these  lands,  to  cultivate  them  on  half 
shares.  A  measure  of  more  immediate  benefit,  was  the  transportation, 
with  their  own  consent,  of  a  hundred  "  maids,  young  and  uncorrupt,'' 
as  wives  for  young  men,  who,  from  being  only  temporary  settlers, 
would  thus  be  made,  by  domestic  ties,  permanent  inhabitants  and  good 
citizens.  The  young  women  met  with  the  heartiest  welcome,  and  none 


1619.]  PROGRESS    OF   THE    COLONY.  307 

remained  long  without  a  husband,  though  the  price  of  a  wife  was  the 
cost  of  her  transportation,  payable  in  tobacco,  except  to  those  who 
were  tenants  of  the  Company's  lands.  Many  poor  children,  both  boys 
and  girls,  were  sent  out  as  apprentices.  The  system  was  sometimes 
taken  advantage  of  by  private  persons,  and  young  women  and  children 
kidnapped  and  sold  as  slaves  to  the  planters ;  but  the  purpose  of  the 
Council  was  benevolent  and  its  results  beneficial  to  the  colony.  Pro 
vision  was  made  for  the  religious  instruction  of  the  people ;  the  prin 
cipal  seats  of  the  colony  were  more  securely  fortified ;  a  lasting  peace 
with  the  Indians  was  thought  to  be  secured  by  treaties.  Within  a 
twelvemonth  eight  ships  were  sent  out  to  the  colony  by  the  treasurer, 
Sir  Edwin  Sandys,  and  four  more  by  private  adventurers,  carrying  an 
aggregate  of  twelve  hundred  and  sixty-one  persons,  to  be  about 
equally  divided  between  the  plantations  of  the  Company  and  those 
belonging  to  individuals.  The  new  English  nation  had  at  length 
taken  firm  root  on  the  shores  of  America. 


Signature  of  James  I. 


CHAPTER  XII. 


COLONIZATION   UNDER   THE  NORTHERN   COMPANY. 

THE  SEA-COAST  OF  MAINE. — THE  EARLY  FISHERMEN. — FRENCH  TRADERS.  —  FONT- 
GRAVE   AND   POUTRINCOURT.  GEORGE  WfiYMOUTH's  VOYAGE.  COLONY   OF    CHIEF 

JUSTICE  POPHAM.  —  SAMUEL  CHAMPLAIN  IN  NEW  YORK.  —  SETTLEMENT  ON  MT. 
DESERT.  —  ARGALL'S  DESTRUCTION  OF  THE  FRENCH  COLONY.  —  JOHN  SMITH  IN 
NEW  ENGLAND.  —  EXPEDITIONS  OF  FERDINANDO  GORGES. —  SECOND  CHARTER  OF 
THE  PLYMOUTH  COMPANY.  —  NOVA  SCOTIA  GIVEN  TO  SIR  WILLIAM  ALEXANDER. — 
GRANT  OF  THE  PLYMOUTH  COMPANY  TO  GORGES.  —  FIRST  TOWNS  IN  NEW  HAMP 
SHIRE  AND  MAINE.  —  THE  BREAKING  UP  OF  THE  PLYMOUTH  COMPANY.  —  CHAR 
ACTER  OF  GORGES. 


ON  a  map  of  the 
State  of  Maine,  its 
rivers  and  lakes  appear  to  be  the 
result  of  an  accidental  slopping 
over  of  water,  just  as  when  it 
curdles  on  a  polished  table  into 
pools,  and  struggles  without  pur 
pose  to  and  fro.  But  no  systematic 
engineering  could  improve  this 
order  of  nature,  or  dis 
pose  the  waters  better 
for  that  inland  commu 
nication  which  the  savages  main 
tained  and  the  white  man  learned 
Indians  at  a  Portage.  of  them.  Broad  and  deep  rivers, 

fed  by  lakes  that  are  strung  upon  rivulets,  with  branches  to  explore 
and  drain  every  nook  of  the  land,  were  highways  which  the  birch 


Maine.  Its 
inland  com 
munication 


1605.]  THE   SEA-COAST   OF  MAINE.  309 

canoe  was  expressly  framed  to  travel;  it  was  no  burden  when  the 
voyager  came  to  carrying-places  around  falls  and  rapids.  The  Kenue- 
bec  was  called  the  shortest  route  to  the  great  river  of  the  North,  the 
St.  Lawrence,  which  could  also  be  reached  by  the  Penobscot,  though 

!/  O 

in  a  more  difficult  and  tortuous  way.  By  water  portages  and  a  few 
day's  marches,  the  Indian  could  strike  the  Chaudiere  and  drop  down 
to  the  neighborhood  of  Quebec,  or  visit  the  ancient  town  of  Hochelaga, 
which  gave  the  St.  Lawrence  its  first  name. 

No  less  remarkable  is  the  coast,  which  hangs  like  a  tattered  fringe 
to  seaward,  broken  into  numerous  coves  and  inlets  with  their  Itg  gea. 
long  protecting  line  of  islands  and  picturesque  bluffs  wooded  coast' 
with  the  birch  and  pine.  The  tide  runs  up  deep  bays  and  fills  the 
quiet  reaches  between  the  mainland  and  the  outer  sea,  inviting  crafts  of 
every  tonnage,  from  a  shallop  to  a  ship,  to  lie  in  shelter  or  to  slip  along 
to  harbors.  Here  the  early  navigators  moored  in  safety  under  the  lee 
of  islands,  and  explored  in  their  boats  the  intricate  waters  of  the  coast, 
to  fill  their  casks,  to  exchange  trinkets  for  peltry  with  the  natives,  or 
to  pitch  upon  a  spot  for  permanent  occupancy.  They  tell  how  the 
contrasts  of  foliage,  the  singing  of  birds,  the  stretches  of  green 
meadow,  and  all  the  scents  of  summer  mixed  with  the  tonic  air,  de 
lighted  them  as  they  rowed  along  the  streams  or  penetrated  into  the 
woods.  Rosier,  who  accompanied  Capt.  George  Weymouth  in  1605 
upon  his  voyage  of  discovery,  and  was  the  chronicler  of  what  they 
saw,  writes  with  great  enthusiasm  of  the  "  excellent  depth  of  water 
for  ships  of  any  burthen,"  of  the  good  holding  ground,  of  the  planted 
peas  and  barley  which  grew  half  an  inch  a  day,  of  the  gallant  coves 
with  sandy  beaches  where  ships  might  be  careened,  secure  from  all 
winds,  and  the  "  plane  plots  "  of  thirty  and  forty  acres  of  clear  grass, 
"  the  goodness  and  beauty  whereof  I  cannot  by  relation  sufficiently 
demonstrate."  It  is  easy  to  conceive  the  surprise  and  pleasure  of 
a  ship's  crew  let  loose  upon  this  balmy  and  picturesque  coast  in  some 
month  of  summer,  as  Weymouth's  were  in  early  June,  after  a  tedious 
voyage  made  in  cramped  quarters,  shared  in  later  times  with  horses, 
goats,  and  cows  for  the  use  of  colonists.  These  men  tasted  the  first 
rapture  which  a  virgin  land,  whose  charms  had  never  been  once  sus 
pected,  could  bestow.  There  grew,  close  to  launching  places,  spars 
of  various  woods,  and  trees  for  building  pinnaces  and  vessels  ;  brooks 
of  sweet  water  came  trickling  down  in  all  directions,  fringed  with 
grass  or  berries  of  the  wood,  the  soil  invited  tillage,  the  woods  were 
stocked  with  game,  colonies  of  beavers  were  established  near  to  falls, 
and  the  sea  swarmed  with  fish  of  many  kinds  —  salmon,  haddock, 
pollock,  and  cod.  The  first  attempts  at  colonizing,  upon  Newfound 
land  and  "  the  Maine,"  turned  upon  the  value  of  this  fishery,  and 


310       COLONIZATION  UNDER  NORTHERN   COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 

were  stimulated  by  it.  There  is  no  doubt  that  many  gangs  of  fish 
ermen  wintered  upon  the  northeastern  coast,  and  upon  islands  off 
the  coast  of  Maine,  many  years  before  there  was  thought  of  char 
tering  a  colony.  So  the  fisherman  pursued  and  worked  a  vein  of 
wealth  wherever  the  cod  ran  along  the  shores  of  the  New 
on  coast  of  World ;  and  the  mute  fish  piloted  History  to  the  scenes  of 
her  most  speaking  achievements.  She  stepped  from  the 
deck  of  a  fishing  smack,  and  began  the  work  of  founding  a  republic 
by  tending  the  rude  stages  where  the  fish  were  dried. 

Norumbega,  the  name  by  which  Maine  was  earliest  known  in  Eng 
land,  although  its  boundaries  were  vague  and  shifting,  is  first 
rations6*?  °"  designated  in  an  account  of  French  voyages  in  Ramusio's 
collection  of  travels.  Norumbega  was  derived  by  European 
pronunciation  from  an  Indian  word  belonging  to  the  tribes  between 
the  Kennebec  and  Penobscot.  It  was  applied  by  them  to  an  aborig 
inal  kingdom  whose  seat  of  power  was  in  a  half-mythical  town  near 
Penobscot  Bay,  and  upon  the  eastern  side  of  it.  But  the  early  geog 
raphers  sometimes  applied  the  name  to  the  whole  region  between  Cape 
Sable  and  Cape  Cod,  and  occasionally  even  as  far  south  as  Florida. 
It  properly  belonged,  however,  only  to  that  region  near  the  Penob 
scot  whose  people  referred  to  a  mysterious  site  of  aboriginal  rule  in 
the  interior.  At  a  later  period,  this  great  lord  of  the  Penobscot  coun 
try  was  called  the  Bashaba ;  but  although  a  good  many  names  of  local 
sagamores  of  distinction  are  mentioned  in  the  early  annals,  nobody 
ever  had  an  interview  with  the  veritable  Bashaba,  nor  entered  the 
traditional  city  of  Norumbega.  It  is  probable  that  the  term  bashaba 
merely  indicated  the  sagamore  who  happened  at  different  times  to 
enjoy  the  ascendency  among  the  Penobscot  tribes. 

It  is  said  that  an  English  ship,  sent  out  in  1527,  sailed  along  the 
coasts  of  Arambec,  a  corruption  plainly  of  Norumbega,  and  that  her 
men  frequently  went  on  shore,  to  explore  these  unknown  lands.1 

Among  other  voyagers  to  the  coast  of  Maine,  at  this  period,  was 
Andre  Thevet,  the  French  traveller  and  cosmographer,  who  had  been 
a  member  of  Villegagnon's  Huguenot  colony  in  South  America.  He 
relates  that  in  1536  he  visited  the  Grand  River  (Penobscot),  and 
gives  a  circumstantial  narrative  of  his  intercourse  with  the  natives. 
The  behavior  of  his  Indians  was  so  effusively  affectionate,  that  one 
is  disposed,  at  first,  to  question  his  truthfulness.  But,  in  fact,  the 
Abnakis  and  Micmacs,  -the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  Maine,  were 

1  Hakluyt,  iii.  129.  Biddle  (j\femnir  of  Sebastian  Cabot),  believes  the  English  voyage  re 
ferred  to,  to  be  identical  with  that  of  John  Rut,  in  the  same  year  (mentioned  in  Pnrchas, 
vol.  iii.  p.  809),  and  Kohl  (Maine  Hist.  Coll.,  vol.  i.,  Second  Series),  seems  to  share  his 
opinion,  and  says  :  "  This  voyage  was  the  first  instance  in  which  Englishmen  are  certainly 
known  to  have  put  their  foot  on  these  shores." 


1605.]  THE   FRENCH  AND  THE   INDIANS.  311 

more  amiable,  and  indulged  in  more  social  habits  than  were  known 
among  other  Indians  of  New  England.  Their  temper  was  not  uni 
form,  however ;  at  the  least  hint  they  would  fly  to  suspicions,  and 
take  up  arms.  But  there  is  abundant  evidence  that  they  were  dis 
posed  to  welcome  the  English,  until  the  hostile  policy  of  the  French 
began  to  exert  its  influence. 

The  Abnakis,  who  inhabited  the  territory  from  the  Penobscot, 
north  to  Canada,  and  through  New  Hampshire,  loved  to  col-  Aborigines 
lect  in  permanent  villages,  of  which  there  were  five,  two  in  of  Maine- 
Canada,  and  one  on  each  river,  the  Kennebec,  the  Androscoggin,  and 
the  Saco.  These  are  described  by  French  missionaries  as  having  been 
enclosed  by  stout  and  high  palisades.  The  wigwams  were  built  of 
bended  poles,  and  covered  with  bark.  The  dress  of  the  natives  was 
"  ornamented  with  a  great  variety  of  rings,  necklaces,  bracelets,  belts, 
etc.,  made  out  of  shells  and  stones,  worked  with  great  skill.  They 
practised  also  agriculture.  Their  fields  of  skamgnar  (corn)  were 
very  luxuriant.  As  soon  as  the  snows  had  disappeared,  they  prepared 
the  land  with  great  care,  and  at  the  commencement  of  June  they 
planted  the  corn,  by  making  holes  with  the  fingers,  or  with  a  stick, 
and  having  dropped  eight  or  nine  grains  of  corn,  they  covered  them 
with  earth.  Their  harvest  was  at  the  end  of  August."  1 

They  were  very  brave,  tenacious  of  purpose,  faithful  to  engage 
ments,  uncompromising  in  war,  hospitable,  "  and  their  attachment  to 
the  family  was,"  says  one  of  their  historians,  "  such  as  we  do  not 
read  of  in  other  tribes  of  the  Algic  people." 

The  French  knew  how  to  attach  these  Indians  permanently  to 
themselves,  and  keep  them  firmly  hostile  to  the  English.  They  soon 
came  under  the  influence  of  the  French  missionaries,  and  of  the  sol 
diers  and  traders,  who  showed  the  tact  and  adaptability  which  distin 
guish  that  nation.  Even  in  giving  names  to  places,  a  significant  dif 
ference  between  the  French  and  English  policy  showed  itself.  The 
French  flattered  the  Indians  by  trying  to  pronounce  all  their  local 
names,  and  by  perpetuating  them.  The  Englishman  made  English 
words  migrate  and  settle  upon  the  new  sites,  ignoring  the  native 
nomenclature.  He  loved  thus  to  recall  his  Portsmouth,  Rye,  Appledore, 
his  York,  Falmouth,  and  Portland.  Either  the  place  of  his  birth,  or 
the  port  from  which  he  started,  provided  names  for  the  new  places. 
The  French  studied  in  every  way  to  appropriate  the  habits  of  the 
Indians,  to  hunt,  travel,  eat,  sleep,  and  dress  in  the  native  fashion. 
They  were  apt  learners  of  the  different  dialects ;  the  lists  of  words 
and  the  dictionaries  compiled  by  their  missionaries  can  be  relied  upon. 
And  these  devoted  men  drew  savage  admiration  by  their  constancy, 

1  Collections  of  Maine  Hist.  Soc.,  vi.  218-19. 


312       COLONIZATION  UNDER  NORTHERN    COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 


French 
claim  to 
Nouvelle 
France. 


calmness  in  perils,  assiduous  efforts  to  teach  and  civilize,  and  their 
skill  in  healing,  as  well  as  by  the  impressive  solemnity  of  those  novel 
services  of  religion,  with  cross,  cup,  bell,  and  candle,  under  the 
groined  arches  of  the  primitive  cathedral.  But  the  English  possessed 
over  the  French  one  great  advantage ;  and  that  has  since  been  styled 
"  manifest  destiny."  For  the  current  of  history  undermines  and  car 
ries  away  the  adroitest  policies  and  the  nicest  arts  of  accommodation. 
The  French  claimed  the  region  which  included  Maine,  under  the 
title  of  Nouvelle  France,  although  from  the  time  of  Jacques 
Cartier  and  De  la  Roque,  until  nearly  into  the  beginning  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  they  made  no  definite  attempt  to 
settle  there.  In  the  last  decade  of  the  sixteenth  century,  a  new  in 
terest  was  awakened,  especially  in  Brittany  and  Normandy,  whose 
fishers  continued  in  constant  intercourse  with  the  new-found  lands. 
In  1598,  the  Marquis  de  la  Roche  obtained  a  patent  from  Henry  IV., 
and  made  a  futile  attempt  at  settlement.  He  landed  a  colony  of 
wretches  drawn  from  the  galleys  and  the  prisons  of  France,  on  the 
barren  shores  of  Sable  Island,  and  left  them  to  drag  out  a  miserable 
existence,  subsisting  on  some  cattle  which  had  bred  from  a  number 
left  t^iere  by  the  ships  of  the  Baron  de  Leri,  eighty  years  before. 

The  year  following,  Pontgrave",  a  merchant  of  St.   Malo, 
who  had  been  for  furs  as  far  as  Tadoussac  on  the  St.  Law 
rence,  formed  the  design  of  establishing  a  fur-trading  port  in 
Canada.      He   enlisted  with  him   De   Chauvin,  an  experi 
enced  sea  officer,  who  had    sufficient  influence  at  court  to  obtain  a 

commission  similar  to  that  grant 
ed  De  la  Roche.  Chauvin  went 
on  two  voyages,  but  whatever 
results  they  might  have  produced 
were  checked  by  his  sudden 
death,  as  he  prepared  to  go  upon 
a  third.  In  1603  Pontgrav£ 
went  himself  on  a  voyage,  taking 
with  him  Samuel  de  Champlain, 
an  officer  of  repute  in  the  French 
navy,  a  man  in  good  favor  at 
court,  and  an  ardent  Catholic. 

Together  with  Pontgrave, 
Champlain  explored  the  St. 
Lawrence,  and  carried  back  to 
France  maps  and  observations 
made  upon  the  banks  of  that 
noble  river.  In  the  following  year,  another  and  more  important 


of  Pont- 
chwnpiam 


Samuel  de  Champlain. 


1604.]  DE  MONTS  IN  ACADIA.  313 

expedition  was  undertaken,  which  came  very  near  establishing  a  per 
manent  French  colony  within  the  present  limits  of  Maine.    This  new 
expedition  was  led  by  Pierre  du  Guast, 
Sieur  de  Monts,  the  governor  of  Pons         s~. 
in   the   province  of   Saintonge.      He     ( /  ( 
had  been  on  one   of   the  voyages  of  Signature  of  Champlain. 

Pontgrave",  and   on  the  death  of  Du 

Chaste,  the  governor  of  Dieppe,  who  had  succeeded  to  Chauvin's 
commission  for  discovery  and  colonization  in  America,  De  Monts  ob 
tained  it. 

De  Monts  was  a  Huguenot,  but  he  had   rendered  such  important 
services  to  Henry  IV.  during  the   troubles  of  the  League,  that  the 
king,  though  he  changed  his  faith,  did  not  lose  confidence  in  Acadia 
his  servant.     Eager  for  maritime  adventure  and  discovery,  f^Mont^ 
De  Monts  procured  an  edict  which  created  him  lieutenant-  1604- 
general  of  Acadia,  as  the  country  was  called  from  the  40th  to  the  46th 
degree  of  north  latitude.1     Free  exercise  of  his  own  religion  was  per 
mitted  to  him,  in  return  for  which  he  engaged  to  have  the  savages 
converted  to  Catholicism.     A  company  was  formed  by  merchants  of 
Rouen  and  Rochelle,  to  whom  the  king  granted  by  letters-patent  the 
exclusive  trade  in  furs  and  fish  between  the  40th,  and  54th,  degrees 
of  north  latitude. 

De  Monts  sailed  from  Havre  de  Grace  on  the  7th  of  March,  1604. 
He  took  with  him  his  friend  Jean  de  Biencourt,  the  Baron  de  Pou- 
trincourt,  and  Champlain,  whose  experience  in  previous  voyages  he 
thought  would  be  of  service  in  this  new  enterprise.  Poutrincourt 
wished  to  find  a  place  to  which  he  might  transfer  his  family,  and 
forget  the  turbulent  politics  of  Europe  in  the  permanent  occupancy 
of  a  land  unvexed  by  parties  and  religious  strife. 

De  Monts  reached  in  about  two  months  a  harbor  on  the  eastern 
side  of  Nova  Scotia,  where  he  found  a  vessel  engaged  in  fishing  and 
an  illicit  fur-trade.  It  was  commanded  by  a  Captain  Rossignol,  whose  • 
only  consolation  for  the  confiscation  of  his  cargo  was  the  transference  of 
his  name  to  the  harbor.  The  place  is  now  called  Liverpool,  and  Rosig- 
nol's  name  is  perpetuated  in  a  lake  not  far  distant,  the  largest  in  Nova 

1  The  word  is  usually  supposed  to  be  derived  from  the  French  or  Latin,  but  comes,  says 
one  authority,  from  the  Indian  word  Aquoddie,  a  pollock.  It  was  corrupted  by  the  French 
into  Acadie,  Acadia,  Cadia,  Cadie.  The  original  is  preserved  in  the  name  of  Passama- 
quoddy  Bay,  which  is  derived  from  Pos  (great),  aguam  (water),  aquoddie  (pollock) ;  mean 
ing  great  water  for  pollock.  Historical  Magazine,  vol.  i.,  p.  84.  Another  authority  (see 
Collections  of  Maine  Historical  Society,  vol.  i.,  p.  27,  note)  says  that  the  Ac.adi  is  a  pure 
Micmac  word  meaning  place,  and  was  used  by  the  Indians  in  combination  with  some  other 
word,  as  Suga-bun-acadi ',  the  place  of  ground  nuts,  and  Passam-acadi  (Passamaquoddy),  the 
t place  of  fish. 


314        COLONIZATION  UNDER  NORTHERN   COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 

Scotia.  The  present  Port  Mouton,  on  the  next  bay,  is  probably  the 
Port  au  Mouton  of  De  Monts,  —  which  he  so  named  because  he  there 
lost  a  sheep  overboard,  —  and  where  he  spent  a  month  on  shore  while 
Champlain  explored  southward  for  a  place  that  would  better  suit  them 
for  a  permanent  settlement. 

Champlain  doubled  Cape  Sable  and  returned  to  show  the  expedition 
the  way  to  the  Bay  of  Fundy.  This  De  Monts  named  Baye  Fran- 
caise ;  the  harbor  now  known  as  Annapolis,  Champlain  called  Port 
Royal.  After  sailing  up  Minas  Bay,  they  crossed  the  Bay  of  Fundy, 
entered  Passamaquody  Bay,  and  on  a  little  island  which  they  named 
St.  Croix,  in  the  river  now  known  as  the  St.  Croix,  the 
in  the  state  Passamaquody,  or  the  Schoodic,  they  determined  to  settle. 
It  was  an  unfortunate  choice  ;  timber  was  scarce  ;  the  water 
had  to  be  brought  from  the  main  land ;  before  the  winter  was  over 
they  were  reduced  to  salt  meat  and  snow  water,  and  the  scurvy  broke 
out  among  them.  The  island  is  now  known  as  Neutral  Island,  and 
is  on  the  border  line  between  Maine  and  New  Brunswick. 

Champlain,  always  restless  and  bent  on  new  discoveries,  sailed  dur 
ing  the  winter  as  far  south  as  Cape  Cod,  which  Gosnold  had 
explores  already  visited  and  named.  The  Frenchman  called  it  Cap 
Blanc,  from  the  white  sands  of  its  long  beaches ;  he  nar 
rowly  escaped  shipwreck  somewhere  along  that  dangerous  coast,  at 
a  place  he  named  Cape  Mallebarre,  perhaps  Gosnold's  Point  Care, 
the  extremity  of  Isle  Nawset.  In  the  spring  he  again  sailed  south 
ward  with  De  Monts,  who  was  determined  to  find  a  better  spot  than 
St.  Croix  on  which  to  plant  his  colony.  They  entered  the  mouths 
of  those  noble  rivers  of  Maine,  the  Penobscot,  the  Kennebec,  the 
De  Monts  Casco,  the  Saco  ;  visited  Mount  Desert,  sailed  up  Portland 
coast  of"  Harbor,  which  De  Monts  named  Marchin,  from  the  Indian 
Maine.  chief  with  whom  they  had  some  trade.  There  was  many  a 
pleasant  spot  in  the  deep  bays  they  penetrated  where  they  could  have 
sat  down  contented  to  fish  and  trade  and  thrive,  far  away  from  the 
turmoils  and  contentions  of  the  Old  World  which  Poutrincourt  hoped 
to  escape.  But  the  natives  showed  none  of  the  kindly  traits  which 
Thevet  had  described ;  they  menaced  and  repulsed  the  strangers,  who 
returned  to  St.  Croix. 

The  condition  of  the  colony  was  more  miserable  than  ever,  and 
hardly  any  change  could  be  for  the  worse.  The  next  move  was  to 
Removal  of  a  harbor  in  Acadia,  on  the  other  side  of  the  Bay  of  Fundy, 
to"port°ny  to  which  Champlain  had  given,  the  year  before,  the  name 
of  Port  Royal,  now  Annapolis.  Here  for  several  years 
the  colony  maintained  a  feeble  existence. 

But  the  English  were  not  idle  while  the  French  were  thus  busy  in  , 


1605.] 


GEORGE  WEYMOUTH'S  VOYAGE. 


315 


attempts  to  gain  a  foothold  in  the  new  country.     Foremost   among 
those    who   saw  the   importance   of    colonization  were   the  earls   of 
Arundel  and  Southampton  ;  the  former,  one  of  those  steadfast  friends 
of  Sir   Walter  Raleigh  who  did  not  desert   him  even  when  led  to 
the  scaffold ;  the  other,  that  friend  and  patron  of  Shakespeare  who 
gave  him  XI, 000  and  was  distinguished  for  the  dedication  Voyageof 
the  poet  made  to  him  of   his  earliest   poems.     These  two  mourthWey" 
noblemen  united  in  sending  out  a  ship  under  George  Wey-  1605- 
mouth,  who  was  instructed  to  explore  that  part  of    North  Virginia 
to  be  known  a  few  years  later  as  New  England. 

Weymouth  sailed  in  the  Archangel,  March  5,  1605.    On  May  17  he 


The  Mouth  of  the  Kennebec. 

came  to  anchor  near  the  island  of  Monhegan,  twelve  miles  southeast 
of  Pemaquid,  an  Indian  word  signifying  "  that  runs  into  the  water." 
The  cape  jutting  southward  forms  the  most  eastern  headland  of 
Lincoln  County.  The  delight  of  Weymouth  and  his  sailors  was  un 
bounded  at  beholding  the  beauty  of  this  island  where  they  first  landed. 
Gooseberries,  strawberries,  wild  peas,  and  rosebushes  grew  to  its 
very  verge,  and  rills  of  sweet  water  trickled  through  cleft  rocks,  and 
ran  into  the  salt  sea.  With  delicious  draughts  from  these  rivulets  the 
men  eagerly  cooled  their  sea-parched  mouths,  while  they  refreshed 
their  eyes  with  the  spring  greenness  of  the  landscape ;  from  the  sea 
they  took  a  store  of  cod,  a  welcome  change  from  their  sea-rations,  which 
gave  them  a  foretaste  of  the  great  plenty  of  fish  they  found  there 
afterwards. 

The  authorities  differ  as  to  the  next  movement  of  Weymouth.    One 
theory  takes  him  up  the  Penobscot  to  the  neighborhood  of  Belfast ; 


316        COLONIZATION  UNDER  NORTHERN  COMPANY.    [CHAP.  XII. 

a  second,  toward  the  islands  outside  of  Boothbay  Harbor,  and  into 
the  Sagadahoc  ;  and  a  third,  up  St.  George's  River,  which  is 


-just  west  of  Penobscot  Bay,  and  runs  up  toward  the  Cam- 
mouth.         J  .  . 

den  Hills.     He  saw  mountains  far  inland  ;  these  are  claimed 

by  some  to  have  been  the  White  Mountains,  and  by  others  the 
Camden  Hills,  because  he  tried  to  reach  them  and  came  so  near  that 
his  men  thought  themselves  "  to  have  been  within  a  league  of  them."  l 
It  hardly  seems  possible  that  they  could  have  made  such  an  estimate 
respecting  the  White  Mountains,  which  can  be  seen  in  clear  weather 
from  several  points  off  the  coast  over  low  land.  On  the  whole,  the 
evidence  seems  to  be  in^  favor  of  their  landing  at  Pemaquid,  and  visit 
ing  the  region  between  the  St.  George  and  the  Kennebec  River. 

If  they  were  delighted  with  the  little  island  where  they  had  first 
touched  land,  they  were  no  less  enchanted  with  the  main- 
with  the  in-  land.  The  narrative  praises  the  richness  of  the  soil  and 
the  number  of  native  products  found  there,  from  the  good 
clay  for  brick-making  to  the  finest  and  tallest  trees  they  had  ever 
seen  ;  the  very  shells  on  the  beach  yielded  pearls,  and  the  bark  of 
the  trees  oozed  gum  which  smelled  like  frankincense.  As  usual,  the 
Indians  received  them  at  first  with  hospitality,  gave  them  good  bar 
gains  in  peltries,  feasted  them  in  their  best  fashion,  and  offered  them 
tobacco.  But  the  savages  soon  showed  mistrust  of  the  whites,  and 
the  whites  suspected  treachery  among  the  savages.  The  hostile  feel 
ing  growing  out  of  these  suspicions  decided  Weymouth  to  keep  no 
faith  with  the  natives.  Five  of  them,  who  trusted  him  sufficiently  to 
come  on  board  his  vessel,  he  detained  and  took  with  him  to  England. 
Arriving  at  the  port  of  Plymouth  he  gave  three  of  them  to  Sir 
Ferdinando  Gorges,  who  was  the  governor  of  the  fort  there,  a  lead 
ing  member  of  the  Plymouth  Council  and  warmly  interested  in  all 
things  concerning  America.  The  other  two  captives  he  sent  up  to 
London  to  Sir  John  Popham.  The  kidnapped  Indians  were  the  ob 
jects  of  curious  wonder.  Such  gaping  crowds  followed  them  in  the  city 
streets  as  Shakespeare  alluded  to,  when  in  "  The  Tempest  "  he  made 
Trinculo  long  to  have  Caliban  on  exhibition  in  England  :  "  Not  a 
holiday  fool  there  but  would  give  a  piece  of  silver  ;  there  would  this 
monster  make  a  man  ;  any  strange  beast  there  makes  a  man  ;  when 
they  will  not  give  a  doit  to  relieve  a  lame  beggar,  they  will  lay 
out  ten  to  see  a  dead  Indian." 

Sir  John  Popham,  the  chief  justice,  and  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges, 
to  whose  care  these  Indians  were  given,  had  both  been  largely  instru 
mental  in  getting  from  the  king  the  patent  for  the  North  Virginia 
Company,  and  their  zeal  received  a  new  impulse  from  the  informa- 

1  James  Hosier's  Narration  of  the  Expedition,  in  Purchas. 


1607.] 


THE   POPHAM   COLONY. 


317 


tion  gained  from  these  captive  natives.      A  ship  was  soon  despatched 
under  Captain  Henry  Chalong  to  make  further  discoveries,   Expeditions 
and  two  of  the  Indians  were  sent  back  in  her.    But  she  unfor-  hameandP 
tunately  was  captured  by  the  Spaniards.    Another  vessel  was  Gorses- 
sent  soon  after  with  Thomas  Hanham  and  Martin  Pring  as  master 
and  captain,  who  took  with  them  the  Indian,  Nahanada,  to  his  tribe 
at  Pemaquid.      And  these  expeditions  were  followed  up  by  another, 
which  but  for   a  series  of  untoward   events,  would   have   made   the 


Indians  in  London. 


permanent  settlement  of  New  England  only  a  few  months  behind  that 
of  Virginia. 

On  May  31, 1607,  The  Gift  of  G-od,  of  which  Sir  George  Popham, 
the  brother  of  the  chief  justice,  was  captain,  and  The  Mary 
and  John,  commanded  by  Raleigh  Gilbert,  a  younger  son  of  colony. 
Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  set  sail  from  Plymouth.     One  hun 
dred  and  twenty  persons  were  on  board,  many  of  them  well  adapted 
for  the  founding  of   a  colony.     There  is    no  evidence  of   the  truth 
of  the  assertion  sometimes  made,  that  the  chief  justice  depleted  the 
prisons  of  England  to  furnish  forth  this  company  ;  in  fact,  his  powers 
could  not  stretch  to  that  extent,  though  James  I.,  a  few  years  later, 
gave  to  persons  who  had  been  prosecuted  for  grave  crimes  the  alterna 
tive  of  a  colony  or  a  prison. 


318       COLONIZATION   UNDER  NORTHERN   COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 

On  board  one  of  the  ships  was  Skitwarroes,1  one  of  the  five  Indians 
Arrival  of      captured  by  Weyinoutli,  to  serve  as  a  guide  and  interpreter. 

the  colony.       rpi  i          i     •  p    ,  i  -,•    • 

Ine  chaplain  ot  the  expedition  was  Richard  Seymour,  a  gen 
tleman  of  the  highest  culture,  who  is  supposed  to  have  been  a  kins 
man  of  Sir  Edward  Seymour,  Lord  Protector  in  the  reign  of  Edward 
VI.  He  lived  in  the  neighborhood,  and  was  probably  related  to 
the  families  of  Raleigh,  Gilbert,  Gorges,  and  Popham,  all  of  whom 
were  allied  by  intermarriage.  Among  the  colonists  were  various  arti 
sans,  carpenters,  sawyers,  laborers,  a  smith, 
an<^  a  master  ship-builder.  They  came  to 
anchor  to  the  north  of  Monhegan  on  the 
31st  of  July,  and  were  soon  boarded  by 
some  natives,  who  seemed  perfectly  familiar 
with  European  trading  habits.  A  week 
was  spent  in  boat  expeditions  among  the 


*4^WJ3*P  Jp^N^gJ^ip^P 

i-'i^'&i,  -•-  ,Vw- 

Meeting  of   Nahanada  and   Skitwarroes. 

islands,  and  on  the  evening  of  the  5th  of  August  they  found  on  one 
of  these  a  cross,  which  Weymouth  had  set  up  two  years  before.  Cap 
tain  Gilbert  sent  a  boat  up  the  river  to  the  mainland,  piloted  by  the 
Indian  Skitwarroes,  to  a  village  of  the  natives  situated  in  Pemaquid. 
At  the  first  appearance  of  the  boat  the  Indians  took  to  their  arms; 
but  when  their  chief  recognized  Skitwarroes,  and  saw  that  those  with 
him  were  Englishmen,  he  commanded  his  party  to  lay  aside  their  bows 
and  arrows,  kissed  and  embraced  the  strangers,  and  entertained  them 
for  hours  with  a  kindly  and  cheerful  welcome.  The  chief  who  met 
them  in  this  friendly  way  was  Nahanada,1  who  had  been  returned  to 
his  home  the  year  before  by  Captain  Hanham. 

1  The  original  accounts  differ  from  each  other,  and  in  themselves,  in  the  spelling  of  these 
Indian  names. 


1607.]  THE  POPHAM    COLONY.  319 

On  August  9,  which  was  Sunday,  they  landed  upon  an  island  to 
which  they  gave  the  name  of  St.  George,  where  the  service  of  the 
Church  of  England  was  read  and  a  sermon  preached  by  the  chaplain, 
many  natives  attending  with  great  sobriety  of  demeanor.     On  August 
15,  the   Gift  of  Grod  entered  the    Sagadahoc,  which  was   the  name 
of  the  broad  channel  below   the   junction  of  the  Androscoggin  and 
Kennebec ;  its  Indian  meaning  is  "  the  end  of  it,"  as  if  it  had  been 
named  by  natives  exploring  from  above.     The  Sheepscot  River  comes 
down  to  the  east,  directly  north  of  George's  Island.1    On  August  17th, 
they  sailed  up  the  Sagadahoc  in  the  pinnace  and  long  boat,  Thesettie. 
and  noticed  all  its  advantages   of   islands  and  fresh  water  ment 
streams ;  and  on  the  next  day  they  made  choice  of  a  peninsula  upon 
the  western  side  which  the  Indians  called,  after  a  native  chief,  Sabino.2 
All  landed  here  on  the  19th,  another  sermon  was  preached,  the  presi 
dent's  commission  was  read,  and  the  first  act  of  the  first  English  colony 
of  New  England  was  complete.    A  fort  was  built,  mounting  twelve 
guns,  to  defend  the  little  town  of  forty  or  fifty  houses  which  quickly 
sprung  up.     The  master  shipwright  of  the  expedition,  Thomas  Digby, 
had  the  timber  cut  down,  shaped,  and  left  to  season  during 
the  autumn,  for  building  a  small  vessel  of  thirty  tons,  which  buut  m 
when  done  was  called  the  Virginia.    This  was  the  first  vessel 
built  by  Englishmen  in  American  waters ;  and  the  first  use  she  was 
put  to  was  to  take  back  to  England,  before  the  winter  was  over,  nearly 
two  thirds  of  the  colonists,  thus  early  discouraged  by  the  rigor  of  the 
climate. 

The  Indians  did  not  relish  this  cool  annexation  of  their  favorite 
peninsula,  in  which  they  were  not  consulted,  not  even  asked  to  sell, 
still  less  to  accept  an  equivalent.  But  it  was  characteristic  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  method.  They  soon  began  to  be  troublesome :  they 
intruded  within  the  enclosures,  and  some  of  the  more  reckless  colo 
nists  set  the  dogs  upon  them,  and  used  their  sticks  too  freely.  Cap 
tain  Gilbert  went  exploring  up  the  river,  and  came  into  the  district 
of  a  chief  less  disposed  than  Nahanada  was  to  keep  the  peace  with 
these  intruders.  They  endeavored  to  get  possession  of  Gilbert  and 
his  crew,  and  he  ran  the  gauntlet  of  menaces  all  the  way. 

1  Its  Indian  name  was  Sipsa-couta,  "  flocking  of  birds."     We  surmise  that  the  English 
language  gained  the  word  coot  from  this  river ;  just  as  skunk  is  a  fragrant  legacy  from  the 
native   sagankou.     Moose  is   derived  from  moussouk,   muskrat,  properly   musquash,  from 
mouskouessou,  and  the  honk,  or  cry  of  the  goose,  from  sehunk.     So  our  favorite  American 
ism,  scoot,  came  from  the  native  word  schoot,  "to  go  with  a  rush;"  and  when,  in  later 
times,  a  new  kind  of  vessel  was  launched  at  Newburyport,  a  bystander,  using  the  same 
native  word,  cried,  "  How  she  schoons  ! "  and  schooner  she  was  from  that  day. 

2  Perhaps  Sebenoa  Anglicized.     This  peninsula  was  a  favorite  resort  of  the  natives,  and 
numerous  relics  of  stone  axes,  hammers,  arrow-heads,  and  chippings  of  stone-work,  indicate 
that  it  was  a  place  for  the  manufacture  of  savage  weapons. 


320       COLONIZATION  UNDER  NORTHERN   COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 


On  the  5th  of  February,  Popham,  who  was  the  president  of  the 

colony,  died,  and  Captain  Gilbert  succeeded  to  the  office.     The  ship 

Mary  and  John   had   been    sent   back   to   London  in  the  preceding 

December,  to  procure  supplies.     It  returned  to  find  the  colony  in  a 

deplorable  condition.     The  winter  had   been  of  exceptional 

d  tbe  coi-      severity ;  fighting  had  broken  out  between  the  men  and  the 

natives ;  the  storehouse  with  all  its  contents  had  been  burned  ; 

the  natives  were  in  possession  of  the  fort  for  awhile,  and  the  explosion 

of  a  barrel  of  gunpowder,  through  their  own  carelessness,  they  believed 

to  be  done  by  the  art  of  the  whites. 
This  incident  probably  was  the  germ 
of  a  story  which  obtained  circulation 
at  a  later  period,  that  the  colonists 
induced  a  number  of  natives  to  drag 


Setting  Dogs  on  the   Indians. 

along  one  of  the  guns  by  the  ropes,  running  with  them  in  front  of  the 
muzzle,  and  that  when  they  were  well  in  line  with  it  the  gun  was  dis 
charged.  But  when  the  Indians  were  recounting  to  the  Jesuits  the 
injuries  which  they  had  sustained  from  the  English,  this  incredible 
incident  was  not  mentioned.  If  it  had  been,  the  Jesuit  missionaries 
would  not  have  failed  to  record  it. 

In  the  spring  came  the  news  of  the  death,  first,  of  Chief  Justice 
Breaking-  Popham,  then  of  Sir  John  Gilbert,  the  elder  brother  of  the 
Popham6  new  governor.  The  last  compelled  the  return  of  Raleigh 
Gilbert  to  England,  for  he  was  his  brother's  heir.  The  loss 
of  two  governors,  of  the  principal  mover  and  proprietor  of  the  colony, 
within  so  short  a  time,  and  the  desertion  of  so  many  of  their  com 
panions  were  discouragements  so  serious  that  the  remaining  forty-five 
determined  to  return  home  with  Gilbert. 


1608.]  CHAMPLAIN'S   DISCOVERIES.  321 

Sir  Francis  Popham,  the  son  of  the  chief  justice,  continued  for 
years  to  send  expeditions  to  the  coast  of  Maine,  at  his  private  cost ; 
but  no  permanent  settlement  was  made,  though  the  crews  of  these 
vessels  may  have  wintered  sometimes  at  Monhegan,  and  sometimes  at 
Pemaquid.  The  Northern  Virginia  Company  was  inactive,  content, 
apparently,  to  watch  and  wait  for  the  results  of  the  efforts  of  the  sister 
company  farther  south.  The  French,  on  the  other  hand,  though  the 
tenacious  preference  of  the  English  for  the  Atlantic  coast  may  have 
served  to  turn  their  attention  to  the  bays  and  rivers  farther  east  and 
north,  persisted  in  the  attempt  to  gain  possession  of  the  land.  In 
1608,  Champlain  penetrated  in  a  new  direction  within  the  territory  of 
the  present  United  States. 

On  the  3d  of  July,  1608,  he  reached  Stadacona  —  Quebec  —  and 
began,  the  next  day,  to  build  a  fort  near  the  spot  where  Jacques 
Cartier  had  passed,  nearly  three  quarters  of  a  century  before,  the 
winter  of  1535-36.  Champlain's  adventurous  spirit  did  not  permit 
him  to  remain  long  at  rest,  and  in  the  intervals  of  his  fre- 

Champlain 

quent  voyages  to  and  from  _b  ranee,  he  was  busy  with  new  founds  QUC- 
discoveries,  making  charts  of  sea-coasts  and  river-courses, 
taking  minute  notes  of  climate  and  the  natural  products  of  the  country, 
and  writing  narratives  of  all  that  befell  him  on  land  and  sea.  When 
in  the  spring  his  fort  at  Stadacona  was  finished,  the  little  colony 
well  established,  their  garden-plots  laid  out  and  carefully  planted,  he 
had  time  to  think  of  new  adventures.  With  a  few  companions  he 
sailed  up  the  great  river,  visiting  its  islands,  entering  the  mouths  of 
its  tributary  streams,  giving  them  names  by  which  many  of  them  are 
known  to  this  day-  At  the  mouth  of  the  Iroquois.  now  the  Richelieu, 
he  met  by  appointment  a  party  of  natives  on  the  war-path  against 
their  enemies,  the  Iroquois.  The  river,  he  learned,  came  from  a  beau 
tiful  lake,  which  his  shallop  could  reach  without  difficulty.  The 
latter  statement  he  soon  found  was  not  true,  the  Indians  deceiving 
him  that  they  might  lure  him  on  to  take  part  in  their  expected  battle. 
Disappointed  but  not  discouraged,  he  persuaded  two  of  his  men  to  go 
on  with  him,  and  sent  the  rest  back  to  Quebec  with  the  vessel. 

They  made  the  somewhat  perilous  passage  safely,  without  losing 
a   single  canoe,  landing  where  the  falls  were  highest   and  carrying 
their  frail  boats  on  their  backs,  till  they  came  to  smoother  Digcovery 
water.     It  was  early  in  July  when  they  entered  the  lake  chaplain, 
dotted  with  many  beautiful   islands   and   surrounded  with  1609- 
noble  trees,  many  of  them,  Champlain  observed,  like  those  of  his  native 
France,  on  which  hung  vines  as  luxuriant  as  he  had  ever  seen  any 
where.     Coasting  the  lake  he  saw  to  the  east  some  lofty  mountain 
peaks,  still  snow-covered  under  the  July  sun.     In  the  secluded  valleys 


322        COLONIZATION   UNDER  NORTHERN  COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 

among  these  mountains  lived  the  fierce  Iroquois,  who  had  fertile  plains 
rich  in  corn  and  other  natural  products.  After  a  sail  about  the  lake 
Champlain  gave  it  his  own  name,  —  the  only  instance,  he  records,  in 
which  he  had  thus  arrogated  to  himself  the  honor  of  his  discoveries. 

Several  days  passed  before  their  foes,  the  Iroquois,  made  their  ap 
pearance.  It  was  in  the  dusk  of  the  evening  when  they  came  to  the 
banks  of  the  lake,  and  all  night  the  two  parties  taunted  and  defied 
each  other  for  the  fight  which  was  to  take  place  when  the  next  day's 
sun  should  rise.  But  the  party  of  savages  who  counted  on  the  assist- 
Fightof  ance  °f  Champlain  and  his  companions,  kept  their  white 
rthe  Indians.  a;Qies  carefully  concealed.  Next  day  they  formed  in  ranks 
and  approached  to  within  about  two  hundred  feet  of  the  Iroquois,  who 
awaited  them  firmjy.  At  that  point  they  opened  their  ranks  to  give 
passage  to  Champlain,  who  advanced  to  the  front  and  discharged  his 
harquebus,  wounding  two  of  the  enemy,  who,  astonished  at  such  an 
appearance  and  its  effect,  fled  in  fright  and  disorder  to  the  woods, 
pursued  by  the  delighted  victors. 

After  this  battle  Champlain  returned  to  Quebec,  where  he  con 
tinued  governor  until  its  surrender  to  the  English  admiral  Kertk  in 
1629.  He  was  reinstated  in  the  office  when  it  again  fell  into  the 
'hands  of  the  French,  and  from  that  time  continued  to  command  there 
till  his  death  in  1635. 

Meanwhile  a  second  attempt  was  made  by  the  French  to  obtain  a 

settlement  on  the  coast  of  Maine.     In  the  autumn  of  1605,  De  Monts 

sailed  for  France,  promising  to  send  out  supplies  to  the  Port 

Further  at-  .  ,  .         ,  •      i-         i       i    i 

tempts  of      Royal  Colony.     But  during  his  absence  preiudice  had  been 

De  Monts.  J  .  ,  .  TT-  i  •     -i 

aroused  against  him  as  a  Huguenot.  His  exclusive  privilege 
of  fishing  the  king  had  revoked,  and  the  merchants  did  not  care  to 
invest  in  a  venture  which  promised  small  returns.  After  many  dif 
ficulties,  however,  he  procured  an  outfit,  and  set  sail  on  May  13,  1606, 
not  arriving  at  Port  Royal  till  July  27,  but  just  in  time  to  prevent 
the  worn-out 'Settlers  from  returning  to  France.  Still  desiring  to  find 
a  more  southerly  place  for  his  colony,  he  despatched  Poutrincourt  on 
the  old  route  along  the  New  England  coast,  and  returned  to  France. 
Off  Cape  Cod  Poutrincourt's  vessel  was  stranded  upon  a  shoal,  and 
three  of  his  men  were  killed  by  the  natives,  who  manifested  great 
hostility.  The  weather  also  proving  unfavorable  he  put  back,  and 
reached  Port  Royal  about  the  middle  of  November.  Champlain 
and  the  other  gentlemen  received  him  with  great  joy,  and  a  butt  of 
the  best  Burgundy  "  made  their  caps  spin  round." 

In  the  midst  of  their  spring  planting  a  vessel  arrived  with  the  un 
welcome  news  that  no  more  men  nor  supplies  could  be  furnished,  and 
that  the  colony  must  be  disbanded.  Port  Royal  was  left  uninhabited 


1613.] 


THE   FRENCHMEN  AT  MT.  DESERT. 


323 


till  1610,  when  Poutrincourt  returned  at  the  instance  of  the  king  to 
make  the  new  settlement  a  central  station  for  the  conversion  of  the 
Indians, — a  work  which  made  some  Jesuit  missionaries  prominent  in 
the  history  of  the  New  World.  His  son  followed  in  1611,  with  Fathers 
Pierre  Biard,  and  Enemond  Masse.  Madame  la  Marquise  de  Guer- 
cheville,  a  pious  Catholic,  to  whom  De  Monts  had  ceded  his  title  to 
Acadia,  and  to  whom  afterwards  the  French  king  granted  the  whole 
territory  now  covered  by  the  United  States,  was  the  chief  patroness  of 
these  voyages.  Desir 
ing  to  make  another 
settlement,  she  des 
patched  a  vessel  in 
1613,  with  two  more 
Jesuits,  Father  Quen- 
tin  and  Gilbert  du 
Thet,  and  forty-eight 
men  under  La  Saus- 
saye,  who  intended  to 
reach  a  place  called 
Kadesquit  (Bangor) 
on  the  Penobscot. 
This  spot  had  been 
selected  by  Father 
Biard  on  a  trip  which 
he  made  from  Port 
Royal  to  the  Penob 
scot.  They  reached 
Port  Royal  on  May 
16,  and  taking  Fa 
thers  Biard  and  Masse 
on  board  sailed  for 
their  destination. 

But  such  a  fog  en 
veloped  them  off  Me- 
nans  (Grand  Manan) 
that  they  had  to  lie  to  for  two  days ;  when  the  weather  cleared  up 
they  saw  the  island  which   Champlain  named  Monts  De-  Mount  Dea. 
serts,  and  which  the  Indians  called  Pemetig,  which  means  ert- 
"  at  the  head,"  from  its  commanding  position.     The  lifting  fog  dis 
closed  Great  Head,  rising  sheer  from  the  ocean  to  buttress  the  forests 
of  Green  and  Newport  mountains.     On  their  right  was  the  broad  sheet 
of  water,  since  called  Frenchman's  Bay,  extending  far  into  the  land. 
Into  this  they  gladly  sailed,  and  dropping  anchor  inside  of  Porcupine 


Great   Head. 


324        COLONIZATION  UNDER  NORTHERN   COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 

Island,  effected  a  landing  not  far  from  the  bar  winch  gives  its  name  to 
a  little  harbor.  There  the  broad  flank  of  Green  Mount,  with  New 
port  just  alongside  to  make  a  deep  and  still  ravine,  greeted  the  eyes 
which  sea-spray  and  the  fog  had  filled.  Eagle  Lake  lay  buried  in  the 
forest  in  front  of  them,  and  the  wooded  slopes  stretched  along  to  the 
right  as  far  as  they  could  see.  The  islands  with  bronzed  cliffs  to  sea 
ward,  and  bases  honeycombed  by  the  tide,  wore  sharp  crests  of  fir  and 
pine.  The  American  coast  does  not  supply  another  combination  so 
striking  as  this,  of  mountains  with  their  feet  in  deep  ocean  on  every 
side,  lifting  two  thousand  feet  of  greenery  to  vie  with  the  green  of 
waves  ;  of  inland  recesses  where  brooks  run  past  brown  rocks,  and 
birds  sing  woodland  songs  as  if  their  nests  swung  in  a  country  remote 


from  sea-breezes.  Delicate  ferns  fill  the  moist  places  of  the  wood, 
and  the  sea-anemones  open  in  the  little  caverns  where  the  tide  leaves 
a  pool  for  them.  Nature  has  scattered  the  needled  pines,  of  shape  so 
perfect,  from  those  of  an  inch  high  to  the  finished  tree,  artfully  dis 
tributed  in  the  open  spaces.  The  Frenchmen  hailed  this  picturesque 
conclusion  to  their  voyage,  and  named  the  place  and  harbor  St.  Sau- 
veur. 

Several  Indian  villages  were  on  the  island.  A  smoke  rose  as  a  sig 
nal  that  the  men  were  observed ;  they  signalled  with  another  smoke, 
and  the  natives  came  to  see  them.  Father  Biard  had  met  some  of 
them  on  the  Penobscot,  and  now  inquired  the  way  to  Kadesquit. 
They  answered  that  their  place  was  better,  and  so  wholesome  that 
sick  natives  in  the  neighboring  parts  were  brought  thither  to  be 
cured.  But  when  Father  Biard  could  not  be  persuaded,  they  belied 


1613.] 


THE   SETTLEMENT   AT    ST.   SAUVEUR. 


325 


their  own  sanitary  praises,  and  begged  the  good  father  to  come  and 
see  their  sagamore,  Asticon,  who  was  very  sick,  and  like  to  die  with 
out  the  sacrament.  This  wily  stroke  prevailed  :  they  took  him  round 
to  the  eastern  shore  of  a  bay,  which  is  now  called  Somes's  Sound,  from 
a  Gloucester  man  who  settled  there  in  1760.  Great  shell  heaps  still 
indicate  the  site  of  Asticon's  village.  He  only  had  an  attack  of 
rheumatism ;  so  the  father  asked  the  natives  to  show  him  the  place 
which  they  esteemed  to  be  so  much  better  than  Kadesquit.  They 
took  him  around  the  head  of  the  Sound,  to  a  grassy  slope  of  twenty 
or  thirty  acres,  with  a  stream  on  each  side,  running  down  to  the  tide. 
The  bay  was  as  still  as  a  lake  ;  "  the  black  soil  fat  and  fertile,  the 
pretty  hill  abutting  softly  on  the  sea,  and  bathed  on  its  sides  by  two 
streams,  the  little  islands  which  break  the  force  of  waves  and  wind."1 


Somes's  Sound. 


These  islands  are  the  Great  and  Little  Cranberry,  and  Lancaster's. 
The  cliffs  rise  to  a  great  height,  and  the  water  at  their  base  is  deep 
enough  for  any  ship  to  ride  a  cable's  length  from  the  shore.  No  won 
der  that  Father  Biard  thought  no  more  of  Kadesquit.  They  planted 
the  cross,  threw  up  a  slight  entrenchment,  and  La  Saussaye  began  to 
plant,  for  the  time  was  early  in  June. 

But,  unfortunately,  the  English  in  Virginia  were  used  to  cruise  along 
the  coast  as  far  as  Pemaquid  annually  to  catch  fish.     This 
year  Samuel  Argall  sailed  on  such  a  fishing  voyage,  some  tack  on  the 
accounts  adding  that  he  was  sent  by  Dale,  the  governor,  to 
drive  the  French  out  of  Acadia.    Champlain  says  he  had  fourteen  pieces 
of  artillery.     When  he  reached  Pemaquid,  the  savages,  not  intending 

1  Father  Biard's  Relation. 


826       COLONIZATION   UNDER  NORTHERN   COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 


any  harm,  as  the  French  and  English  were  then  at  peace,  gave  him 
to  understand  that  Frenchmen  had  arrived  at  Mount  Desert.  They 
attributed  the  excitement  of  Argall  and  his  men  to  a  pleased  anticipa 
tion  of  meeting  the  French,  and  procuring  some  needed  stores.  So  an 
Indian  volunteered  to  guide  Argall  to  the  French  vessel.  He,  without  a 
challenge,  summons,  or  word  of  explanation,  bore  directly  down,  "  swift 
as  an  arrow,"  says  liiard,  upon  the  French  vessel,  on  the  plea  that  it 
was  in  waters  covered  by  the  patent  of  the  Virginia  Company,  and 
opened  fire.  Only  ten  men  were  on  board  the  vessel,  the  rest  being  scat 
tered  on  shore.  The  sails  had  been 
converted  into  deck-awnings,  and  the 
anchor  was  fast  on  the  bottom,  so  that 
by  no  sea  manoeuvre  could  they  evade 
the  attacking  vessel.  No  gun 
ners  were  on  board  ;  l)u  Tliet 
undertook  to  serve  one  of  the 
guns,  and  fired  once  wildly, 
when  he  was  mortally  wounded 


Argall's  Attack  on  the  French. 

by  a  musket  shot.  The  vessel  surrendered,  the  Englishmen  landed 
and  began  to  search  the  tents.  Argall,  finding  La  Saussaye's  desk, 
broke  it  open  and  took  out  his  royal  commission,  then  locked  the 
desk,  and  when  he  returned  coolly  asked  him  for  his  papers.  Of 
course  they  were  missing ;  then  Argall,  pretending  that  he  was  an 
impostor,  with  no  title  to  fish,  trade,  or  settle,  gave  his  soldiers  license 
to  plunder,  which  they  did  thoroughly  in  a  couple  of  days.  After 
the  death  of  Du  Thet,  who  lingered  for  a  day,  the  other  Jesuits 
remonstrated  with  Argall,  and  declared  that  they  were  on  a  genuine 
mission,  approved  by  their  king.  "  Well,"  said  he,  "  it  is  a  great  pity 
that  you  have  lost  your  papers." 

La  Saussaye,  Father  Masse,  and  a  dozen  men  were  turned  loose  in 


1614.]  DESTRUCTION  OF  FRENCH  SETTLEMENTS.  327 

a  boat  to  find  their  way  to  Port  Royal.  Near  the  coast  they  were 
met  by  two  fishing  vessels  which  carried  them  to  France.  Father 
Biard  and  the  rest  of  the  company  were  carried  to  Virginia  ;  and  a» 
Argall  began  by  representing  that  they  had  sailed  without  a  commis 
sion,  they  were  lodged  in  jail,  where  they  were  so  badly  treated,  and 
threatened  with  death,  that  Argall  became  frightened,  and  told  Sir 
Thomas  Dale,  the  Governor,  that  he  had  taken  La  Saussaye's  commis 
sion  ;  they  were  then  released. 

ArgalFs  conduct  was  approved  at  Jamestown.  The  governor 
sent  him  back,  with  his  own  vessel  and  the  French  prize,  to 
destroy  all  the  settlements  in  Acadia.  He  landed  again  at  ^Trnach0 
Somes's  Sound,  cut  down  the  French  cross,  set  up  another 
with  the  English  arms,  and  obliterated  every  trace  of  the  settlement. 
Then  sailing  to  the  island  of  St.  Croix,  he  burned  all  the  vacated 
buildings  there  and  carried  off  a  stock  of  salt.  His  next  point  was 
Port  Royal,  where  Biencourt,  Poutrincourt's  son,  who  was  incapable  of 
making  any  effective  resistance,  tried  to  buy  Argall  off  by  proposing 
to  divide  the  trade  with  him.  But  Argall  executed  his  commission. 
He  "  destroyed  the  fort  and  all  monuments  and  marks  of  French  power 
at  Port  Royal.  He  even  caused  the  names  of  De  Monts  and  other 
captains,  and  the  fleurs-de-lys,  to  be  effaced  with  pick  and  chisel  from 
a  massive  stone  on  which  they  had  been  engraved."  x  In  one  of  his  ves 
sels  were  the  three  Jesuits  who  had  been  taken  to  Virginia.  On  their 
return,  the  vessel  in  which  they  sailed  became  separated  from  Argall's- 
in  a  storm,  and  driven  to  the  Azores,  whence  they  found  their  way  to 
England,  and  then  to  France.  Thus  not  a  Frenchman  was  left  upon  the 
coast  of  Maine,  nor  a  single  cross  to  signify  priority  of  possession. 

After  this  expedition  of  Argall  and  his  ruthless  work  of  destruction 
at  Mount  Desert,  the  next  English  navigator  of  any  note  who  visited 
Maine  was  Captain  John  Smith,  who  in  1614  came  thither 

Jrtrin   Rmifh 

with  two  ships  fitted  out  by  some  London  merchants.  As  in  x«w  Knr- 
usual,  a  search  after  rich  mines  was  announced  as  one  of  the 
chief  objects  of  the  adventure,  but  it  easily  and  naturally  turned  to  ;t 
fishing  and  fur-trading  voyage.  Several  ships  were  drying  and  pre 
paring  their  fish  upon  the  coaste  when  Smith  arrived  among  them,  and 
his  own  sailors,  expert  in  this  sort  of  work,  readily  took  in  a  cargo. 
"  Is  it  not  pretty  sport,"  writes  Smith,  in  his  narrative  of  the  voyage, 
"  to  pull  up  two  pence,  six  pence,  and  twelve  pence  as  fast  as  you  can 
haul  and  veere  a  line." 

Smith  did  not  spend  all  his  time  in  trading  and  fishing,  but  leaving 
most  of  his  crew  thus  employed,  he  cruised  along  shore  in  a  little  boat, 
drawing  a  map  as  he  went  from  isle  to  isle,  from  harbor  to  harbor,, 

1  Beamish's  History  of  Nova  Scotia,  rol.  L,  p.  58. 


328        COLONIZATION  UNDER  NORTHERN  COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 

marking  all  soundings,  rocks,  and  landmarks.  This  map  he  took 
home,  and  submitted  to  the  prince,  —  afterwards  Charles  I.,  —  who 
gave  to  the  country,  at  Smith's  suggestion,  the  name  of  New  England. 
Smith  had  sailed  with  two  ships,  and  on  his  return  left  one  behind 
Indians  kid-  to  finish  lading.  They  took  a  good  cargo  of  fish,  but  not 
capuuiby  satisfied  with  that,  the  ship-master,  Thomas  Hunt,  seized 
twenty-seven1  of  the  savages,  it  is  supposed  in  Plymouth 
Bay,  and  carried  them  captive  to  Spain,  whither  he  went  to  dispose 
of  his  cargo.  There  he  sold  his  fish  at  an  excellent  profit,  and  sold 
also  his  Indian  prisoners  as  slaves.  Through  the  benevolent  efforts 


V- 


Cod-fishiner. 

of  a  brotherhood  of  Spanish  friars,  some  of  the  savages  were  rescued 
and  sent  to  London,  and  thence  to  their  native  country. 

Smith's  characteristic  enthusiasm  was  greatly  excited  by  the  value 

of  the  fishery  on  the  coast  he  had  visited.     He  commended  that  staple 

to  the  consideration  of  English  merchants,  and  argued  that 

Smith's  plea     _  ,..  ,.,, 

forced-         fish,  although  it  might  seem  a  "  mean  and  base  commodity, 

fishery 

had  yet  made  the  fortunes  of  so  thriving  a  state  as  Holland. 
He  also  made  an  able  plea  for  colonization  in  New  England,  declaring 
that  those  who  undertook  the  matter  could,  with  sense,  discretion,  and 
perseverance,  get  rich.  "  For  I  am  not  so  simple,"  he  says,  "as  to 
think  any  other  motive  than  wealth  will  ever  erect  a  commonwealth, 
or  draw  company  from  their  ease  and  humors  at  home,  to  stay  in  New 

1  Accounts  differ  as  to  the  number  of  the  kidnapped  Indians,  but  Smith's  Description  oj 
New  England  says  twenty-seven. 


1617.]  RICHARD  VINES  AT   WINTER  HARBOR.  329 

England,  to  effect  my  purposes."  And  he  therefore  urged  earnestly 
the  great  commercial  value  of  fur  and  fish,  so  abundant  there.  In  a 
letter  written  to  Lord  Bacon,  in  1618,  to  commend  the  fisheries  to  his 
care,  he  says  that  he  had  made  a  fishing  voyage  two  years  previous 
with  only  forty-five  men,1  and  had  cleared  ,£1,500  in  less  than  three 
months  on  a  cargo  of  dried  fish  and  beaver  skins.  This  would  be  a 
good  catch  even  for  a  fisherman  of  the  present  day,  for  a  pound  ster 
ling  in  Lord  Bacon's  time  had  more  value  than  twenty-five  dollars  of 
our  money  of  the  present  day,  so  that  John  Smith's  three  months'  ven 
ture  brought  in  an  amount  nearly  equal  to  $40,000. 

He  made  an  attempt  to  go  again  to  New  England  in  1615,  but  was 
driven  back  to  port  by  storms ;  on  starting  out  a  second  time  he  was 
captured  by  French  pirates,  and  only  reached  England  after  much  de 
lay  and  ill  fortune.     His  energy  in  fighting  against  adverse  circum 
stances  seems  for  the  first  time  to  have  deserted  him,  for  we  hear  no 
more  of  any  attempt  at  new  adventures,  though  he  never  lost  his  in 
terest  in  the  New  World.     In  the  same  year  of  this  second  attempt  of 
Smith's,  Richard  Hawkins,  who  was  made  president  of  the  voyage  of 
Plymouth  Company,  sailed  to  the  coast  of  New  England,  but  Hawkins, 
found  so  serious  a  war  raging  among  the  savages  that  he  left  1615- 
those  parts,  going  south  to  Virginia,  and  afterwards  to  Spain,  where 
he  sold  his  cargo,  and  thence  returned  to  England. 

Finding  himself  not  seconded  by  any  other  of  the  Company,  Gorges 
sent  out,  at  his  own  expense,  Richard  Vines  to  make  a  set-  Richard 
tlement.  This  heroic  man  spent  the  winter  of  1616  and  Vines- 
1617  in  Saco  Bay,  at  a  place  called  Winter  Harbor.  A  pestilence 
which  depopulated  all  the  Indian  tribes  between  the  Penobscots  and 
the  Narragansetts  had  broken  out.  Vines,  who  was  a  physician,  had 
no  thought  of  deserting  his  post,  though  his  vessels  offered  an  easy 
escape ;  he  tended  the  Indians  with  assiduous  kindness,  and  after 
wards,  when  he  ventured  into  the  interior,  the  savage  gratitude  pre 
ceded  him,  and  he  was  everywhere  received  with  hospitality  and  rever 
ence.  Through  all  the  raging  of  this  disease  among  the  Indians,  he 
and  his  men  often  lying  in  the  cabins  with  sick  and  dying,  not  one 
of  them,  it  is  narrated,  ever  felt  so  much  as  a  headache,  but  retained 
uninterrupted  health. 

Vines  was   absorbed   in   trade,  discovery,   and   the   cultivation   of 
friendly  relations   with   the   Indians.     The   dismal  winter, 
which  devastated  so  many  native  wigwams,  was  used   by  vines  in  the 

New  World. 

him  to  make  the  whole  coast  better  known  to  the  English. 

1  This  was  very  likely  the  voyage  of  1614,  as  the  date  of  the  letter  probably  referred  to 
its  publication,  and  there  is  no  record  of  any  voyage  accomplished  by  Smith  after  1614, 
This  was  a  very  profitable  cargo,  as  he  says  Hunt  sold  his  fish  "  at  forty  reals  a  quintal, 
each  hundred  weighing  two  and  a  half  quintals." 


330        COLONIZATION   UNDER  NORTHERN  COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 


He  had  no  fear  of  the  savages,  for  he  ventured  in  a  canoe  up  the 
valley  of  the  Saco  River  to  its  source,  that  trickles  through  that  nar 
row  gap,  or  Crawford's  Notch,  the  sad  gate  by  which  so  many  white 
people  were  subsequently  taken  into  Canadian  captivity.  He  was 

the  first  to  describe  the 
White  Mountains,  if 
not  the  first  to  reach 
them.  To  him  also 
belongs  the  honor  of 
restraining  traders 
from  debauching  the 
Indians  with  rum. 
Thus  he  favored  a 
kind  of  Maine  Law  be 
fore  Maine  existed. 
The  English  might 
have  traced  to  rum  the 
gradual  deterioration 
of  the  native  temper 
of  the  Abnakis,  from 
which  they  were  the 
first  to  suffer  in  the 
frontier  raids  ;  it  ex 
asperated  courage  to 
ferocity,  and  embit 
tered  every  practice  of 
savage  warfare.  Rum 
never  made  the  In- 
d  i  a  n  good-natured. 
He  became  something 
appalling,  a  concentration  of  the  cruel  and  mocking  rage  of  many 
men,  as  soon  as  liquor  filled  his  veins. 

The  post  of  Gorges,  as  governor  of  Plymouth,  seems  to  have  been 
especially  favorable  to  catch  all  the  news,  and  receive  all  the  wonders 
which  the  line  of  returning  ships  brought  to  England  from  her  pos 
sessions  in  the  New  World.     The  governor  had  begun  by 

The  Indian  .  .  ,  J 

captives  of  questioning  the  first  Indian  captives  whom  Weymouth  had 
brought  him,  about  the  country  from  whence  they  came, 
and  he  seems  to  have  regarded  them  as  most  useful  allies  in  discovery. 
Thus  it  happened  again  that  some  of  the  natives  who  were  kidnapped 
were  sent  to  him  to  dispose  of,  either  to  be  retained  in  his  keeping 
or  returned  on  the  ships  that  he  fitted  out  for  America.  One  of  these 
Indians,  named  Epenow,  a  savage  of  "goodly  and  brave  aspect,"  who 


Richard  Vines   at  Crawford  Notch. 


1619.]  EXPEDITIONS   OF   FERDINANDO  GORGES. 

had  been  exhibited  in  London  as  a  curiosity,  came  into  Gorges'  hands, 
and  was  sent  by  him  as  guide  and  interpreter  in  an  expedition  sent 
in  1614,  fitted  out  by  himself  and  the  Earl  of  Southampton. 

But  the  wily  Epenow  was  restless  in  captivity.     He  quietly  bided 
his  time,  and  no  sooner  was  he  in  his  native  land  than  he   Epenow  _ 
planned  with    his   savage    kinsfolk,  who  came  out  in   their  jj.^8^6 
canoes  to  visit  the  ship,  to  make  his  escape.     Though  strictly  Enslish 
watched,  and  clad  in  long  coats,  to  be  easily  laid  hold  of  if  he  should 
attempt  to  escape,  he  suddenly  leaped  off  the  ship,  one  day,  when 
standing  between  two  men  who  were  acting  as  his  guards,  and  once  in 
the  water  easily  reached  the  shore. 

Another  of  these  savages,  named  Tisquantum,  or  Squanto,  one  of 
those  whom  Thomas  Hunt  had  sold  in  Spain,  was  shipped 
to  Newfoundland,  where  Captain  John  Mason  was  governor 
of  an  English  plantation.    Here,  in  1618,  Squanto  met  with  a  Captain 
Dernier,  who  had  sailed  with  Smith  in  one  of  his  voyages.     Dermer 
wrote  to  Gorges  that  if  he  would  send  him  a   commission  in  New 
England,  he  would   go   there   from   Newfoundland,   taking   Squanto 
with  him.     Gorges  responded  by  sending  out  Captain  Rocroft,  who 
had  before  been  in  Virginia. 

Rocroft  was  ordered  to  go  to  New  England  only,  but  he  had  barely 
reached  the  coast  when  he  overhauled  a  bark,  commanded 
by  a  Frenchman,  from  Dieppe,  and  enriching  himself  with  croft  in  vir- 
what  he  found  on  board,  sailed  for  Virginia.     Here  he  fell 
in  with  some  boon  companions,  quarrelled  with  them,  and  was  killed. 
His  vessel,   left  to  drift  without  a  captain,  was  lost,  and  although 
some  of  the  cargo  was  saved,  no  part  of  this  venture  ever  came  back 
to  Gorges. 

In  the  mean  time,  Dermer,  disappointed  in  his  hopes  of  getting 
a  ship  in  Newfoundland,  returned  to  Plymouth  to  confer  Captainl)er. 
with  the  governor  and  get  his  commission.  Gorges  hurried  ^yfy'oor- 
him  back  in  a  ship  of  his  own  which  happened  to  be  in  port.  ges-  1619- 
Dermer  left  his  ship  at  the  island  of  Monhegan,  and  in  an  open  pin 
nace  explored  the  coast  in  1619  from  Maine  to  Virginia.  At  Mar 
tha's  Vineyard  he  met  Epenow,  who  told  the  story  of  his  escape  with 
much  merriment.  Thence  Dermer  sailed  through  Long  Island  Sound, 
—  the  first  Englishman  who  discovered  that  inland  passage,  —  lost  an 
anchor  in  the  rapids  of  Hell  Gate  ;  acquired,  as  he  believed,  certain 
knowledge  from  the  Indians  of  a  passage  to  the  South  Sea  ;  and  went 
out  to  sea  again  through  the  Narrows.  He  may  have  thought  the 
Hudson  river  to  be  the  channel  which  the  Indians  assured  him  they 
knew.  If  so,  when  he  returned  the  next  season  in  search  of  it,  he 
was,  very  likely,  better  instructed  by  the  Dutch  whom  he  found  on 


332       COLONIZATION   UNDER  NORTHERN   COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 

Manhattan  Island.  He  seems,  at  any  rate,  to  have  said  nothing  more 
about  the  South  Sea,  to  have  gone  again  to  Virginia,  and  to  have  died 
there  soon  after. 

In  the  mean  time  the  Northern  Company,  of  which  Gorges  was  the 
charter  of  most  active  member,  had  never  been  satisfied  with  their 
outh?co™i-  rights  under  the  charter  which  connected  them  with  the 
pany.  1620.  gouth  Virginia  Company,  and  in  1620  urged  their  claims 
to  a  new  patent  so  strongly  that  it  was  granted  them  by  the  king. 

This  defined  their  territory  as  that  land 
from  the  40th  to  the  48th  degree 
of  latitude.  Against  this  charter 
the  Virginia  Company  loudly  remon 
strated,  because,  according  to  Gorges's 

Signature  of  Ferdinando  Gorges.  ,   .,  ,    ,  ..      . 

account,  "  they  were  debarred  the  inter 
meddling  within  our  limits  who  had  formerly  excluded  us  from  having 
to  do  with  theirs."  J  The  dispute  was  referred  to  a  committee  of 
Parliament,  before  whom  Gorges  appeared  three  times  to  argue  the 
rights  of  the  Plymouth  Company,  and,  on  the  third  hearing,  being 
called  to  state  the  case,  he  made  a  speech  so  sensible  and  so  eloquent, 
urging  the  value  of  the  fishing  trade,  which,  even  while  they  were 
disputing  on  boundaries,  might  be  monopolized  by  French  or  Hol 
landers,  that  most  who  heard  him  were  satisfied  with  his  representa 
tion,  and  in  spite  of  the  strong  influence  held  by  the  Virginia  Com 
pany,  the  king  could  not  be  induced  to  revoke  his  patent. 

Their  charter  being  thus  confirmed,  the  Plymouth  Company  felt 
Grant  to  themselves  on  a  sure  basis,  and  more  than  ever  Gorges  was 
iTexander?  inclined  to  redouble  his  attempts  at  settlement  in  the  new 
lands.  The  company  in  1621  made  a  grant  to  one  of  the 
Scotch  favorites  of  James  I.,  Sir  William  Alexander,  afterwards 
made  Earl  of  Stirling,  a  man  of  some  literary  fame  both  as  a  drama 
tist  and  a  writer  of  sonnets.  This  grant  was  called  Nova  Scotia, 
and  extended  from  Cape  Sable  to  the  St.  Lawrence,  including  Cape 
Breton,  and  all  the  islands  within  six  leagues.  It  will  be  seen  that 
this  grant  encroached  on  the  French  dominion  of  Acadia,  which  still 
stretched  its  indefinite  boundaries  about  that  region.  The  French 
then  and  thenceforth,  until  the  final  settlement  between  France  and 
England,  claimed,  and  largely  maintained  their  claim,  to  all  the 
territory  east  of  the  Penobscot  and  north  to  the  St.  Lawrence  ;  the 
English  held  their  right  to  all  west  of  the  Kennebec.  The  land 
lying  between  was  disputed  territory,  which  neither  was  fully  able 
to  hold.  Alexander's  design  was  to  people  all  his  territory  with  his 
own  countrymen,  who  should  present  a  firm  barrier  of  Scotch  Presby- 
1  Gorges's  Narrations,  Maine  Hist.  Coll.,  vol.  ii. 


1623.]  THE   LACONIA    GRANT.  333 

terianism  to  the  Catholicism  which  the  French  settlers  had  brought 
thither. 

But  the  territory,  including  all  the  sea-coast  of  Maine,  New  Hamp 
shire,  and  Massachusetts,  between  the  lands  of  Alexander  and  the 
little  Pilgrim  colony  just  fastened  on  that  rocky  shore  at  Plymouth,  was 
still  unoccupied.  Ships,  laden  with  fish,  furs,  and  timber,  constantly 
plied  between  England  and  its  namesake  in  the  New  World.  In  one 
year  fifty  ships  came  into  English  ports  from  these  parts  with  profit 
able  cargoes  of  these  homely  exports,  and  the  value  of  their  American 
possession  began  to  be  clearly  recognized  by  the  Company,  even  though 
no  mines  like  those  of  Mexico  and  Peru  were  found  there.  Early  in 
1622,  Gorges  for  the  first  time  got  a  special  grant  for  himself  from  the 
Company  of  which  he  was  so  indefatigable  a  member.  He  joined  with 
him  John  Mason,  also  a  member  of  Plymouth  Company,  who  had 
been,  says  Gorges,  governor  of  a  plantation  in  Newfound-  The  IJICOQ^ 
land,  and  was  a  man  of  action  and  experience.  This  grant  Grant-  1623- 
the  two  owners  named  Laconia  ;  it  embraced  the  region  between 
the  Merrimack  and  Kennebec,  stretching  back  to  Canada  and  the 
great  lakes.  The  year  their  grant  was  confirmed,  1623,  they  sent 
over  a  ship-load  of  settlers,  half  fishermen  and  half  planters,  with 
all  necessary  tools  and  provisions,  to  make  a  permanent  Settlement. 
settlement.  They  sailed  in  the  spring,  and  debarked  at  Ha^6 
the  mouth  of  the  Piscataqua.  There  they  divided  into  two  1 
parties.  One  of  these  stopped  at  a  pleasant  place,  which  was  named 
"  Strawberry  Bank,"  where  the  white  blossoms  of  the  wild  straw 
berry  spreading  over  the  land  gave  promise  of  fruitful  farms,  and 
the  close  proximity  of  the  sea  made  it  easy  for  the  fishermen  at  any 
time  to  take  to  their  boats.  There  they  built  a  rude  house  for  gen 
eral  occupation,  and  went  to  work  at  once  to  furnish  means  for  cur 
ing  the  fish,  which  was  to  be  their  staple  product,  by  erecting  salt 
works.  This  was  the  site  of  the  old  town  of  Portsmouth,  New  Hamp 
shire.  The  other  party  went  up  the  river  a  few  miles,  and  began  the 
plantation  of  Dover.  These  two  towns  were  the  first  decided  fruits  of 
Gorges's  work  of  colonization. 

Almost  simultaneously   with   the   beginning   of   these  settlements 
another  enterprise  was  begun  by  the  Plymouth  Company. 
There  was  as  vet  no  general  government  instituted  in  its  general  of 

.  i       •  i     -i  •  the  Plym- 

territories,  and  it  was  therefore  decided  to  appoint  a  gov-  outhcom- 
ernor-general  over  their  whole  domain,  who  should  go  in 
person  to  America,  and  establish  such  laws  and  government  as  should 
be  in  conformity  to  those  of  England.     Robert  Gorges,  a  son  of  Fer- 
dinando,  was  thus  appointed  in  1623,  and  a  large  grant  of  land  on 
Massachusetts  Bay,  of  three  hundred  square  miles,  was  given  him  by 


334        COLONIZATION   UNDER   NORTHERN  COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 

the  Company  of  Plymouth.  He  had  for  his  assistants  Captain  West 
and  Captain  Christopher  Levett,  both  of  whom  had  been  in  New 
England,  and  also  the  governor  of  the  New  Plymouth  Colony  already 
Robert  established  on  lands  near  his  own  grant.  Gorges  went  first 
Gorges.  to  ~$ew  Plymouth  to  confer  with  its  governor,  and  was  hos 
pitably  received.  The  wife  of  Robert  Gorges  was  a  daughter  of  the 
Earl  of  Lincoln,  who  felt  so  much  interest  in  Puritan  emigration, 
and  Gorges,  probably,  had  no  special  hostility  to  the  religious  senti 
ments  of  the  New  Plymouth  colony,  and  held  most  amicable  rela 
tions  with  the  Pilgrim  fathers.  But  he  did  not  like  the  country,  and 
only  remained  there  till  the  spring  of  1624,  when  he  took  ship  and 
went  up  the  coast  to  the  mouth  of  the  Piscataqua,  where  he  was  to 
meet  Captain  Levett.  He  soon  after  went  back  to  England  and  never 


View  at  the   Mouth  of  the   Piscataqua. 

returned  to  America.  His  brother,  John  Gorges,  succeeded  him  in  his 
rights  there,  and  in  his  turn  made  over  this  grant  to  William  Brere- 
ton,  who  established  several  families  in  the  lands  originally  given  to 
Robert  Gorges. 

Captain  Levett,  now  one  of  the  assistants  of  the  newly  appointed 
governor-general,  had  shortly  followed  his  chief  from  England,  and 
met  him  at  the  mouth  of  the  Piscataqua.  Here  Mr.  David  Thomp 
son,  one  of  the  planters  who  had  settled  in  Portsmouth  the  year  be 
fore,  already  had  a  successful  plantation  ;  both  Gorges  and  Levett 
were  his  guests.  Captain  Levett  made  an  interesting  exploration  of 
Leyetfs  voy-  Mame  in  the  region  of  the  Sagadahoc,  looking  for  a  place  for 
ages.  1623.  permanent  settlement.  He  had  the  true  spirit  of  an  adven 
turer,  and  relates  cheerfully,  that  after  sleeping  night  after  night  on 


1630.]  SETTLEMENTS   IN  MAINE.  335 

the  wet  ground,  he  was  filled  with  content  at  getting  dried  grass 
for  his  bed  ;  and  recounts  with  much  merriment  the  story  of  the 
beggar,  who  said  if  he  were  rich  he  would  have  every  day  a  breast  of 
mutton  with  a  pudding  in  it,  and  sleep  up  to  his  neck  in  dry  straw. 

Levett  finally  built  a  house  at  a  place  he  called  York,  somewhere 
near  the  present  site  of  that  town,  in  Maine,  and  then  returned  to 
England,  where  he  printed  an  account  of  all  that  he  had  seen  and 
done,  and  specially  commended  to  the  attention  of  merchants  the  rich 
products  of  the  country  and  sea-coasts,  in  timber,  furs,  and  codfish, 
ending  with  the  wholesome  advice  that  no  man  go  to  the  country 
unless  he  was  willing  to  work.  He  declares  that  a  man  with  a  family 
who  were  unfit  to  labor  would  do  better  to  stay  at  home  with  them  ; 
but  he  that  could  work  and  had  not  too  many  hostages  to  fortune  in 
the  shape  of  wife  and  children,  if  he  went  out  properly  equipped  with 
tools,  and  enough  provisions  to  last  till  he  was  prosperously  estab 
lished,  was  certain  to  get  rich  in  New  England. 

In  all  these  attempts  no  permanent  plantation  which  could  fairly 
be  called  a  settlement  had  been  made  on  the  coast  of  Maine. 
Although  a  large  part  of  the  Laconia  grant  was  within  in  limits  of 
the  present  limits  of  that  State,  yet  the  first  expedition  sent 
by  Mason  and  Gorges  had  established  itself  on  the  other  side  of  the 
river,  which  was  to  form  the  boundary  of  New  Hampshire.  As  Lev 
ett  explored  the  coast,  although  he  found  many  fishing  stations,  and 
mentions  several  large  tracts  that  had  been  granted  to  English 
owners,  he  speaks  of  no  settlements  west  of  the  Piscataqua  after  he 
left  the  hospitality  of  Mr.  Thompson's  plantation.  There  were  some 
scattered  beginnings  on  Monhegan  Island,  and  several  fishing  stages 
for  the  cure  of  the  fish,  some  of  which  afterward  formed  the  nucleus 
of  a  town ;  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  solitary  plantations  may  have 
been  begun,  of  which  we  have  no  record,  along  that  coast  which 
furnished  resting  places  and  harbors  for  so  many  fishing  vessels,  and 
from  whence  so  much  tall  timber  had  already  been  carried  away.  In 
1625,  two  wealthy  merchants  of  Bristol,  Robert  Aldworth  and  Giles 
Eldridge,  bought  Monhegan  Island,  and  sent  over  an  agent  to  settle 
there  ;  a  year  later  they  bought  the  point  of  Pemaquid,  which  had 
already  been  sold  by  Samoset,  the  friend  of  the  New  Plymouth  colo 
nists,  to  an  English  purchaser,  and  there  they  established  a  flourishing 
colony,  which  in  1630  numbered  eighty-four  families. 

•In   this   same   year  1630,   the   Plymouth   Council    gave    Richard 
Vines  and  John  Oldham,  each  a  tract  of  land  on  the  Saco  settlements 
River,  four   miles  broad  on  the  sea,  and   extending   eight  £nd°vdine™ 
miles  up  into  the  land.     Oldham  had  been  six  years  in  the  on  the  Saco 
country,  and  Vines's  coming  must  certainly  date  thirteen  or  fourteen 


336        COLONIZATION  UNDER  NORTHERN   COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 

years  earlier.1  These  two  men  founded  the  towns  of  Biddeford 
and  Saco,  on  their  tract,  which  faced  each  other  on  opposite  sides  of 
the  river.  These  were  the  most  decided  beginnings  of  settlements  in 
Maine.  No  such  well-defined  towns  were  built  in  this  as  in  the  other 
colonies,  and  to  this  want  of  centralization  and  concentration  Maine 
owed  in  part  its  relation  afterwards  as  a  dependency  of  Massachusetts. 
Its  scattered  settlements  were  unable  to  preserve  for  it  a  separate  ex 
istence  when  its  stronger  neighbor  prepared  to  include  it  in  her  more 
powerful  organization. 

In  1629,  when  the  settlements  in  Laconia  on  the  Piscataqua  were 
Gorges  and  s^  years  old,  Mason  and  Gorges  divided  their  grants  into 
vide°their  ^wo  parts,  the  former  taking  all  west  of  the  Piscataqua,  and 
naming  it  New  Hampshire,  —  Mason  being  then  governor  of 
the  County  of  Hampshire,  England,  —  and  the  latter  all  east  of  that 
stream,  to  the  River  Sagadahoc,  the  eastern  boundary  of  Laconia. 
Gorges  named  his  part  of  the  territory  New  Somersetshire,  from  the 
county  which  had  been  his  early  home.  For  this  new  tract,  now 
solely  his,  he  sent  his  nephew  William  Gorges  and  others,  "  with 
craftsmen,  for  the  building  of  houses,  and  erecting  of  saw-mills,"  also 
cattle,  laborers,  and  servants,  and  the  foundation  of  a  plantation  was 
laid.  This  was  the  town  of  York,  on  which  a  planter  named  Edward 
Godfrey  was  the  first  settler.  On  this,  Gorges  had  set  aside  an  in 
heritance  for  his  grandson  Ferdinando,  of  12,000  acres,  and  it  seems 
to  have  been  his  favorite  point  for  the  establishment  of  a  proprietary 
interest  for  his  family  in  New  England. 

But  already  bitter  complaints  were  made  in  England,  that  discon- 
The  piym-  tented  spirits  full  of  disaffection  to  the  king,  and  hostile  to 
pany  resign  the  government  of  the  established  church,  were  settling  on 
less! pa  "  the  grants  made  by  the  Plymouth  Company.  Gorges,  in 
New  England,  was  looked  upon  with  jealousy  and  dislike  by  many  of 
the  Puritans,  because  of  his  large  territorial  claims  in  their  vicinity,  as 
well  as  on  account  of  his  opinions  as  a  loyalist  and  member  of  the 
English  Church  ;  on  the  other  hand  he  was  attacked  in  England  as  an 
upholder  and  author  of  the  reputed  license  of  laws  and  opinions 
among  the  new  colonies  in  Massachusetts.  He  seems  to  have  been 
deeply  hurt  at  this,  after  his  long  and  arduous  work  in  forwarding  the 
plantation  of  English  colonies  in  New  England,  and  he  "  therefore 
was  moved  to  desire  the  rest  of  the  lords,  that  were  the  principal 
actors  in  this  business,  that  we  should  resign  our  grand  patent  to  the 
king,  and  pass  particular  patents  to  ourselves,  of  such  parts  of  the 

1  There  is  a  doubt  about  the  exact  time  of  Vines's  first  coming.  Prince,  in  his  Chronol 
ogy,  says  it  was  the  winter  of  1616-17,  but  Gorges,  in  his  narrative,  puts  it  after  the  attempt 
at  settlement  by  the  Popham  Colony,  and  just  before  one  of  the  voyages  of  1614. 


1635.]  DIVISION   OF   THE    COMPANY'S   LANDS.  337 

country  about  the  sea-coast  as  might  be  sufficient  to  our  own  uses,  and 
such  of  our  private  friends  as  had  affections  to  works  of  that  nature."  l 
This  was  done  in  1635,  and  the  lands  of  the  Company,  lying  between 
the  forty-eighth  and  thirty-sixth  degree  of  latitude,  were  parcelled  out 
among  its  members.2 

This  new  division  confirmed  the  right  of  Gorges  to  the  tract  lying 
between  the  Piscataqua  and  the  Kennebec,  with  a  sea-coast 

*      •  •!  -I  f  t  i  The  terri- 

ot  sixty  miles,  and  an  extent  or  one  hundred  and  twenty  tory  of 
miles  inland.  And  now  for  the  first  time,  he  called  this  his 
province  of  Maine,3  and  he  drew  up  for  it  a  code  of  laws,  dividing  the 
land  first  into  counties,  subdividing  these  into  hundreds,  and  again 
into  parishes  or  tithings,  as  fast  as  population  flowed  in  to  fill  up  the 
vacant  places.  He  offered  also  to  transport  planters  to  his  domain, 
promising  to  assign  them  a  certain  portion  of  land  at  the  low  rate  of 
two  or  three  shillings  for  a  hundred  acres,  and  if  any  would  found 
a  town  or  city,  he  would  endow  it  with  such  liberties  and  immun- 
ties  as  they  would  have  in  England.  Others  of  poorer  condition, 
who  would  go  as  laborers,  should  have  as  much  land  as  they  could 
till,  at  the  rent  of  four  or  six  pence  an  acre,  according  to  the  situ 
ation. 

The  laws  and  government  were  a  return  to  Saxon  simplicity, 
the  lord  proprietary  retaining  ownership  of  the  soil.  In  1637,  the 
king  gave  Gorges  a  commission  as  governor  of  New  England,  to  com 
pensate  him  for  his  strenuous  efforts  in  colonization,  and  the  many 
losses  he  had  suffered  in  these  endeavors.  He  made  preparations  to 
go  to  Maine,  to  assume  the  duties  of  this  office,  and  see  a  country 
in  which  he  had  so  great  an  interest,  but  some  accident  prevented  his 
departure,  and  he  never  came  to  America.  Three  years  later,  he  sent 

1  Gorges's  "  Brief  Narration,"  Maine  Hist.  Coll.,  vol.  ii.,  part  2,  pp.  5,  7. 

2  The  divisions  were  :  (1.)  Between  the  St.  Croix  and  Pemaquid,  to  William  Alexander. 
(2.)  From  Pemaquid  to  Sagadahoc,  in  part  to  the  Marquis  of  Hamilton.     (3.)  Between  the 
Kennebec  and  Androscoggin ;  and  (4.)  From  Sagadahoc  to  Piscataqua,  to  Sir  F.  Gorges. 
(5.)  From  Piscataqua  to  the  Naumkeag,  to  Mason.     (6.)  From  the  Naumkeag  round  the 
sea-coast,  by  Cape  Cod  to  Narragansett,  to  the  Marquis  of  Hamilton.     (7.)  From  Narra- 
gansett  to  the  half-way  bound,  between  that  and  the  Connecticut  River,  and  fifty  miles  up 
into  the  country,  to  Lord  Edward  Gorges.    (8.)  From  this  midway  point  to  the  Connecticut 
River,  to  Earl  of  Carlisle.     (9  and  10.)  From  the  Connecticut  to  the  Hudson,  to  Duke  of 
Lennox.     (11  and  12.)  From  the  Hudson  to  the  limits  of  the  Plymouth  Company's  terri 
tory,  to  Lord  Mulgrave.  —  See  Hubbard's  Hist.  N.  E.,  Mass.  Hist.  Coll.,  Series  2,  vol.  v., 
p.  228.    Williamson's  Hist.  Maine,  vol.  i.,  p.  256.     Gorges's  "  Brief  Narration,"  Maine  Hist. 
Coll.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  54. 

3  Sullivan  in  Hist,  of  Maine,  and  others,  say  that  the  territory  was  called  the  Province  of 
Maine,  in  compliment  to  Queen  Henrietta,  who  had  that  province  in  France  for  dowry. 
But  Folsom,  "  Discourse  on  Maine,"  Maine  Hist.  Coll.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  38,  says  that  that  province 
in  France  did  not  belong  to  Henrietta.     Maine,  like  all  the  rest  of  the  coast,  was  known  as 
the  "  Maine,"  the  mainland,  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  the  word  so  much  used  by  the  early 
fishers  on  the  coast,  may  thus  have  been  permanently  given  to  this  part  of  it. 


338        COLONIZATION  UNDER  NORTHERN  COMPANY.     [CHAP.  XII. 

over  his  kinsman  Thomas  Gorges,  who  came  first  to  Boston,  and  after 
a  courteous  reception  by  the  governor  there,  went  to  take  up  his 
abode  at  Agamenticus. 

To  Ferdinando  Gorges  more  credit  is  due  than  has  been  always 
The  services  acknowledged,  for  his  persistent  efforts  to  settle  New  Eng- 
terdofCharac  land,  and  for  his  unswerving  belief  in  the  value  of  such  a 
Gorges.  colony  to  the  mother  country.  In  the  conflict  of  patents 
and  titles  between  him  and  the  Virginia  Company,  and  between 
him  and  the  colonists  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  his  real  and  essential 
services  as  the  friend  of  colonization  have  been  in  some  degree 
lost  sight  of.  As  a  staunch  adherent  to  the  Established  Church, 
he  undoubtedly  wished  that  those  who  should  find  homes  in  the 
lands  under  his  jurisdiction  in  the  New  World  should  be  of  the 
faith  of  that  Church  in  which  he  believed.  But  the  jealousy  with 
which,  for  this  reason,  he  was  regarded,  seems  to  have  had  no  suffi 
cient  ground  ;  for  no  sectarian  narrowness  prevented  his  being  the 
earnest  friend  of  the  Puritans  of  New  Plymouth,  and  always  desirous 
of  their  success  and  welfare.  If,  indeed,  the  fear  of  him  as  a  zealous 
Churchman  was  quite  sincere,  it  was,  at  least,  no  doubt  increased  by 
a  covetous  jealousy  of  him  as  a  patentee.  As  so  often  happens,  the 
contemporary  estimate  of  his  character,  taking  its  form  from  the  con 
victions  and  interests  of  those  who  made  it,  has  survived,  and  is  often 
accepted  as  just  by  those  who  do  not  in  the  least  sympathize  with  the 
partial  and  narrow  views  which  led  to  that  judgment.  Losing  sight 
of  these,  or  taking  them  at  their  real  value  as  the  result  of  local  and 
temporary  influences,  the  true  place  of  Gorges  is  found  among  those 
Englishmen  whose  far-sighted  wisdom,  zeal,  and  energies  were  de 
voted  earnestly  and  unselfishly  to  the  permanent  settlement  of  his 
countrymen  upon  this  continent.  He  builded,  perhaps,  better  than 
he  knew  ;  but,  so  far  as  he  did  know,  he  built  with  no  narrow  pur 
pose. 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

DUTCH   EXPEDITIONS  TO  NORTH  AMERICA.  —  SETTLEMENT   OF   NEW 

AMSTERDAM. 

COMMERCIAL  ENTERPRISE  AND  PROSPERITY  OF  THE  DUTCH.  —  THEIR  INTEREST  IN  A 
SHORT  ROUTE  TO  INDIA.  —  EARLY  NORTHEAST  VOYAGES.  —  HENRY  HUDSON  EM 
PLOYED  BY  EAST  INDIA  COMPANY.  —  His  FIRST  VOYAGE  TO  AMERICA.  —  ENTRANCE 
INTO  NEW  YORK  BAY  AND  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  HUDSON  RIVER.  —  His  RETURN  TO 
ENGLAND. —  VOYAGE  TO  HUDSON'S  BAY. — THE  DUTCH  ESTABLISH  TRADING-POSTS 
AT  MANHATTAN  ISLAND. — DUTCH  WEST  INDIA  COMPANY  CHARTERED. — EMIGRA 
TION  OF  WALLOONS.  —  SETTLEMENTS  ON  SITES  OF  ALBANY  AND  NEW  YORK  CITY. 

ALONG  the  whole  Atlantic  coast  of  North  America,  there  were,  in 
the  early  years  of  the  seventeenth  century,  only  three  feeble  Euro 
pean  colonies  established,  —  that  of  the  Spanish  at  St.  Augustine,  of 
the  English  on  the  James  River,  and  of  the  French  in  Acadia  on  the 
shores  of  the  Bay  of  Fundy.  Yet  more  than  a  hundred  years  had 
passed  away  since  it  was  claimed  that  Cabot  had  run  along  this  coast 
for  a  thousand  miles  in  an  English  ship  ;  and  that  only  a  few  years 
later  Verrazano  for  the  French,  and  Gomez  for  the  Spanish,  had  visited 
and  named  some  of  the  most  distinctive  of  its  rivers,  bays,  and  capes. 
Of  all  the  states  of  Europe,  Spain  alone  had  increased  in  wealth  and 
power  from  the  discovery  of  the  New  World.  Into  her  coffers,  both 
public  and  private,  gold  had  poured  in  such  enormous  quantities  from 
the  ravishment  of  Mexico  and  Peru,  as  to  affect  the  relative  value  of 
everything  that  was  bought  and  sold  among  civilized  people  ;  but 
otherwise  no  other  nation  shared  in  this  sudden  wealth  except  as 
their  ships  could  spoil  the  ,  Spaniards  on  the  high  seas.  The  Em 
peror  Charles  V.  stamped  upon  his  gold  coin  the  device  of  the  Pillars 
of  Hercules  and  the  legend  Plus  Ultra  ;  but  other  powers  saw  as  yet 
little  reason  to  boast  that  there  was  much  for  them  beyond  the  west 
ern  boundary  of  Europe. 

That  Spain  had  gained  so  much  and  other  nations  seemingly  so 
little,  was  owing  partly  to  the  poverty  in  gold  and  silver  of  the  north 
ern  regions  ;  partly  to  the  failure  to  find  the  northwest  passage  to 
the  South  Sea ;  and  partly  to  the  absorbing  interest  of  great  political 
and  religious  complications  which  agitated  all  Europe  during  much  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  But  there  were  secondary  results  of  American 


340        DUTCH   EXPEDITIONS  TO  NORTH   AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XIII. 

discovery  in  the  growth  of  commerce  and  navigation,  the  closer  rela 
tions,  whether  hostile  or  friendly,  between  nations,  the  significance 
of  which  was  to  be  developed  in  the  coming  years  of  another  era. 
These,  as  they  led  the  way  in  a  certain  degree  to  juster  views  of  the 
importance  of  the  New  World  to  the  Old,  so  also,  they  brought  an 
other  power  into  competition  with  the  other  maritime  states  of  Europe 
for  a  share  in  the  acquisition  of  a  hemisphere. 

When  Charles  V.  resigned  his  Spanish  possessions  to  his  son,  with 
certain  outlying  kingdoms  in  Europe  and  that  great  and  vague  Plus 
Ultra,  a  portion  of  them  included  a  country  small  in  extent,  but  al 
ready  of  extraordinary  wealth  and  energy,  —  a  country  of  which  the 


Medal.    Time  of  Charles  V. 

favorite  phrase  of  historians  has  always  been  that  it  had  "  wrested 
its  territory  from  the  sea."     This  was  the  region  occupied 

The  Nether-  J  & 


. 

by  the  seventeen  provinces  of  the  Netherlands.  Its  people 
had  been  busy  for  centuries  in  redeeming  foot  after  foot  of 
swamp,  and  marsh,  and  submerged  land,  and  surrounding  the  fertile 
territory  thus  gained  with  dikes  and  defences  against  the  ocean  ;  in 
developing  an  agriculture  which  was  amazing  considering  the  re 
sources  at  command  ;  in  establishing  trades  which  even  at  this  time 
produced  the  highest  results  of  any  in  Europe  ;  and  in  training,  as 
such  means  inevitably  must,  a  race  of  prosperous,  vigorous,  and  intel 
ligent  citizens.  It  is  easy  to  admit,  without  being  carried  away  by  any 
enthusiastic  admiration,  that  the  material  advancement  of  the  country 
at  the  time  of  Charles's  abdication  denoted  the  highest  degree  of 
prosperity.  The  emperor  is  said,  and  probably  without  exaggeration, 
to  have  derived  two  of  the  five  millions  of  gold  which  formed  his 
annual  revenue,  from  these  little  provinces  alone.1  They  had  become 
leaders  in  the  commerce  of  the  world,  and  had  gained  much  of  the 
trade  that  had  been  a  great  source  of  wealth  to  the  southern  nations 
of  Europe  ;  they  had  shown  themselves  powerful  in  war  as  well  as  in 

1  Suriano  MS.,  quoted  by  Motley,  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  chap.  i. 


1581.]  WAR  OF  THE  UNITED  NETHERLANDS.  341 

peace ;  and  their  political  institutions,  in  all  those  things  where  they 
themselves  controlled  them,  were  liberal  and  enlightened  not  only  for 
the  time,  but  might  have  been  held  so  in  a  much  later  period. 

It  was  dangerous  to  attempt  to  oppress  or  repress  provinces  like 
these  ;  but  Charles  and  Philip  were  among  the  most  short-  Policy  of 
sighted  of  their  class  of  rulers.  Charles  had  treated  the  towl^dthe 
Netherlands  with  cruelty  of  every  kind;  he  had  extorted  Netherlands- 
from  them  enormous  sums  for  schemes  of  personal  ambition,  besides 
constantly  drawing  from  them  a  revenue  utterly  disproportionate  to 
their  place  among  his  possessions ;  he  had  interfered  with  their  polit 
ical  liberties  and  charters  in  every  possible  way ;  repressed  every  at 
tempt  to  make  their  institutions  as  liberal  as  the  intelligence  of  their 
citizens  required  ;  issued  edicts  disposing  of -their  people  as  if  they  had 
been  born  serfs  ;  and  finally  had  established  the  Inquisition,  where 
Protestantism  was  rapidly  becoming  the  prevalent  faith.  But  it  was 
reserved  for  Philip  to  attempt  to  carry  out  his  father's  policy  with  a 
still  more  terrible  thoroughness,  and  with  a  bigotry  which  even 
Charles  did  not  bring  into  the  work.  He  established  a  still  more 
elaborate  tyranny  in  the  provinces  ;  sent  them  governors  each  one  of 
whom  was  worse  than  his  predecessor ;  and  finally,  by  setting  over 
them  the  brutal  Alva,  he  roused  the  Netherlands  into  open  war. 

This  war  continued  through  the  century,  and  soon  assumed  its  true 
character  —  that  of  a  war  of  independence.  What  was  already  the 
wealthiest  and  strongest  of  the  regions  subject  to  Spain,  became 
through  it  one  of  the  first  of  the  self-sustained  nations  of  Europe. 
Bound  together  by  the  Union  of  Utrecht  in  1579,  and  declaring  their 
entire  independence  in  the  memorable  declaration  issued  at  War  of  the 
the  Hague  on  the  26th  of  July,  1581,  the  seven  provinces  JJether- 
of  Gelderland  and  Zutphen,  Holland,  Zealand,  Utrecht,  lands- 
Friesland,  O  very  seel,  and  Groningen,  states  which  had,  at  length,  de 
termined  to  throw  off  all  foreign  rule,  established  the  Republic  of  the 
United  Netherlands,  and  carried  on  the  conflict  against  Spain  not  as  a 
rebellion,  but  as  an  independent  power.  It  was  apparently  as  unequal 
a  struggle  as  any  recorded  in  history  ;  but  the  heroic  pertinacity  with 
which  it  was  continued  was  greater  than  the  inequality  of  the  combat 
ants.  The  little  republic  steadily  gained  ground  through  all  discour 
agements.  The  murder  of  William  of  Orange,  the  great  leader  of  his 
people,  only  "  hardened  their  stomachs,"  as  Walsingham  wrote,  "  to 
hold  out  as  long  as  they  should  have  any  means  of  defence."  This 
spirit  brought  about  its  inevitable  results.  Spain  was  slowly  but  very 
surely  taught  the  strength  of  it ;  and  more  than  forty  years  after  the 
time  when  Philip  had  sent  Alva  into  his  provinces,  the  independence 
of  the  United  Netherlands  was  acknowledged  in  a  treaty  which  estab- 


342 


DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS  TO  NORTH  AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XIII. 


lished  a  twelve  years'  truce,  conceded  virtual  freedom  of  worship,  and 
practically  granted  to  the  Dutch  great  material  advantages  which  had 
long  been  in  dispute.  The  seven  provinces  which  had  maintained  the 
long  and  unequal  war,  took  their  place  as  a  united  independent  re 
public. 

The  new  nation  had  not,  however,  won  its  independent  existence 

only  by  an  ordinary  struggle  with  arms  ;  it  had  used  means  which 

were  perhaps  as  important  to  the  world  at  large  as  the  ends  which 

they  gained.      It   had    defeated    Spain    almost    literally  by 

Commercial         .     "_  „     .  A  J        J 

prosperity  of  virtue   oi  its  wonderful   commercial  prosperity.     Provinces 

the  Dutch. 

that  had  been,  fifty  years  before,  a  most  thriving  and  im 
portant  source  of  the  riches  of  the   state,  had  attained  during  the 


Dutch   Shipping.      [16th   Century.] 

struggle  to  the  commercial  leader 
ship  of  the  world.  "  In  every  branch 
of  human  industry,"  says  Motley,  "  these  republicans  took  the  lead. 
.  .  .  .  But  the  foundation  of  the  national  wealth,  the  source  of  the 
apparently  fabulous  power  by  which  the  republic  had  at  last  over 
thrown  her  gigantic  antagonist,  was  the  ocean."  l  He  cites  author 
ities  to  show  that  at  this  time  the  United  Netherlands  had  nearly  one 
hundred  thousand  sailors  in  her  service,  and  possessed  three  thousand 
ships  in  her  commercial  and  war  fleets. 

While  its  commerce  in  Europe  was  of  very  great  importance,  the 
real  golden  prize  which  the  new  nation  in  the   long  conflict 
had  almost  completely  taken  away  from  Spain,  was  the  India 
trade.     So  humiliating  and  disastrous  was  this  loss  to  the  Spaniards, 

1  Motley,  the  United  Netherlands,  vol.  iv.,  pp.  552,  553. 


The  East 
India  trade. 


1594.]  NORTHEAST  VOYAGES.  343 

that  when  by  the  treaty  they  were  compelled  practically  to  concede 
the  right  of  Eastern  commerce  to  the  Dutch,  they  did  so  in  a  secret 
article,  and  in  language  that  vainly  sought  to  conceal  the  fact  by  inge 
nious  circumlocution.  For  twenty  years  this  trade  had  so  increased, 
and  capital  had  flowed  into  it  in  such  abundance,  that  it  had  returned 
threefold  to  its  owners.  In  1602,  seven  years  before  the  truce,  the 
Dutch  East  India  Company,  the  first  of  great  trading-monopolies,  was 
formed  by  the  consolidation  of  several  small  corporations,  its  charter 
granting  it  sole  permission  to  trade  for  twenty-one  years  to  the  east 
of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  to  sail  through  the  Straits  of  Mag 
ellan  ;  four  years  afterward  it  declared  a  dividend  of  seventy-five  per 
cent.  The  establishment  of  a  similar  company  for  trade  to  the  West 
Indies  had  been  suggested  some  time  before  this,  and  small  associations 
for  that  purpose  had  even  been  formed ;  but  a  renewed  attempt  in 
1607  was  put  aside,  for  the  time  at  least,  by  the  States  General.1 

With  such  interests  as  they  had  at  stake  in  the  East,  it  would  have 
been  extraordinary  if  the  government  and  merchants  of  the  Nether 
lands  had  not  been  drawn  sooner  or  later  into  the  search  for 
the  supposed  short  passage  to  India.     They  had  not  been  passage  to 
idle  in  the  matter :  and  their  first  efforts,  like  all  others,  had 
been   confidently  directed  to  the  Arctic  Seas.     They  had   carefully 
watched  the  English  expeditions  in  both  hemispheres  ;  but  Linschoten, 
perhaps  their  chief  practical  geographer,  the  study  of  whose  life  had 
been  paths  of  ocean  navigation,  and  Plantius,  another  learned  scholar 
of  the  time,  and  many  more,  were  firm  believers  in  the  theory  that 
the  long-sought  way  lay  to  the  northeast,  through  ice-bound  regions, 
about  which  the  common  people  held  as  many  wild  superstitions  as 
ever  the  ancients  had  held  about  the  ultimate  bounds  of  their  narrower 
world.2 

In  June,  1594,  Willem   Barentz,  a  pilot  of  Amsterdam,  with  four 
vessels  provided  by  the  provincial  and  several  city  govern- 

11  1 •    •  •  1-1  tii  Northeast 

ments,  —  the  whole  expedition  being;  advised  and  furthered  voyages  by 

,     *  &  .  the  Dutch. 

by  the  geographers  just  named,  and  by  others,  —  sailed  for 

the  Arctic  region  to   the    northeast.      Barentz,  separated   from    the 

1  In  1591,  according  to  the  Dutch   historians,  William  Usselincx   of  Antwerp  had  sug 
gested  such  a  company.     In  1597  Leyen  of  Enckhuysen  and  Peterszoon  of  Amsterdam,  two 
merchants,  had  formed  small  societies  for  West  India  trade.     In  1607,  the  consideration  of 
renewed   proposals  of  Usselincx  was  postponed  by  the  States,  lest  the  granting  of  another 
large  charter  should  prejudice  the  approaching  negotiations  with  Spain.     Compare  Motley, 
United  Netherlands,  vol.  iv.,  pp.  298,  299,  300.     Brodhead's  History  of  the  State  of  New  York, 
vol.  i.,  pp.  21,  22,  Dutch  authorities  cited. 

2  Many  of  these  fantastic  notions  of  the  north  are  detailed  by  Motley,  United  Netherlands, 
vol.  iii.,  pp.  553,  554,  where  they  are  repeated  from  several  Dutch  sources.    Some  believed  a 
region  to  exist  there  where  perpetual  summer  reigned,  and  a  cultured  and  happy  race  lived 
in  great  comfort  and  order  ;  others  peopled  the  Arctic  lands  with  races  of  savages,  half  men 
and  half  beasts,  and  with  various  terrible  monsters. 


344 


DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS  TO  NORTH  AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XIII. 


rest,  reached  and  explored  Nova  Zembla ;  while  the  others  sailed  into 
the  straits  called  the  Waigats.  They  all  returned  before  the  winter. 
Linschoten,  the  geographer,  who  had  accompanied  one  of  the  ships, 
was  still  sanguine  that  the  northeast  passage  to  India  was  possible ; 
the  hopes  of  the  rest  were  somewhat  dampened.  Nevertheless  the 
enterprise  was  tried  a  second  and  a  third  time :  the  second  expedi 
tion,  in  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1595,  proceeded  by  way  of  the 
Waigats,  but  was  an  utter  failure,  returning  without  result  of  any 
kind ;  while  the  third,  in  1596,  under  Barentz,  Heemskerk,  and  Van 
der  Kyp,  penetrated  beyond 
the  eightieth  parallel,  and  dis 
covered  and  landed  upon  Spitz- 
bergen.  Barentz  and  Heems 
kerk,  separating  from  the 


Barentz  at  Nova  Zembla. 


other  vessel,  rounded  Nova  Zembla,  and  became  imprisoned  by  the 
ice  near  Ice  Havenga  Bay,  to  which  Barentz  had  given  the  name. 
They  were  kept  here,  enduring  the  greatest  suffering,  until  the  next 
year  ;  and  it  was  in  endeavoring  to  escape  from  their  imprisonment, 
that  Barentz  finally  yielded  to  the  rigor  of  the  climate  and  to  priva 
tion,  dying  in  his  boat  in  June,  1597.  His  companions  finally  effected 
their  return  ;  but  with  this  last  failure  much  of  the  enthusiasm  about 
a  northeastern  passage  died  away. 

These  attempts  show  how  fully  prepared  the  Netherlander  had 
become,  when  their  independence  was  finally  acknowledged,  and  their 
commercial  prosperity  had  reached  so  great  a  height,  to  turn  their 
attention  to  a  new  region  of  the  earth.  The  old  pathways  to  India 
were  all  their  own  ;  they  had  thus  far  found  the  way  effectually 
barred  to  the  northeast  ;  and,  commercially  at  least,  they  might 


1607.]  HENRY  HUDSON.  345 

naturally  look  for  new  worlds  to  conquer.  The  English  voyages  to 
the  west  had  been  followed,  as  were  all  English  undertakings,  with 
watchful  and  jealous  eyes  ;  but  the  old  delusion  was  still  powerful  : 
it  was  only  India  upon  which  minds  were  fixed  ;  and  we  shall  see  how 
it  was  only  the  action  of  one  navigator  that  turned  Dutch  enterprise 
toward  the  west  at  all. 

Among  the  persons  in  intimate  relations  with  the  Muscovy  Com 
pany  of  England,  of  which  Sebastian  Cabot  was  the  governor,  and 
which  had  sent  the  expedition  of  Willoughby  in  search  of  a  northeast 
passage  to  India,  was  an  experienced  navigator,  Henry  Hudson.  It 
is  quite  likely  that  he  was  the  lineal  descendant  of  one  of  the  found 
ers  of  that  corporation,1  and  may,  for  that  reason,  have  been  held  in 
high  esteem  and  trust  by  its  members,  and  employed  on  other  impor 
tant  voyages  before  he  went  upon  those  by  which  he  is  best  known. 
He  was  probably  a  native,  as  he  was  a  citizen,  of  London  ;  he  was  a 
friend  of  Captain  John  Smith,  and  intimate  with  other  adventurous 
navigators  of  the  time  ;  and  no  doubt  from  training  and  associations, 
the  aim  of  his  life,  as  it  was  that  of  so  many  of  his  contemporaries, 
was  the  discovery  of  a  passage  to  the  East,  either  by  a  northeastern 
or  northwestern  passage. 

The  last  expedition,  under  the  direction  of  the  Muscovy  Company, 
was  commanded  by  Hudson.  Sailing  from  Gravesend  on  Henry  Hud. 
the  first  of  May,  1607,  he  was  instructed  to  proceed  directly  to'th/north- 
across  the  pole.  He  steered  northwest,  and  along  the  Green-  east"  1607> 
land  coast  to  about  the  eightieth  parallel,  but  could  penetrate  no  far 
ther  because  of  the  ice,  along  the  unbroken  barrier  of  which  he  sailed 
to  the  eastward,  to  the  region  of  Spitzbergen.  But  he  could  nowhere 
find  an  opening  in  the  almost  solid  wall ;  and  late  in  the  same  year 
he  returned  to  England  after  a  practically  fruitless  voyage.  In  the 
early  part  of  the  next  season  he  made  another  attempt,  this  time  to 
the  northeast ;  but  the  ice  again  stopped  him  near  Nova  Zembla,  and 
he  made  his  way  back  with  another  report  of  ill  success. 

The  Muscovy  Company  now  abandoned  for  the  time   all  further 
effort.    But  the  report  of  these  two  voyages  had  excited  wide  Hudson  in 
attention  ;  it  was  of  just  the  nature  to  stimulate  the  enter-  Nether-0  the 
prise  of  the  Dutch  rivals  of  the  English  traders  ;   and  the  lands- 
navigator,  who  had  proved  himself,  even  in  his  failures,  to  be  skilful, 
brave,  and  of  great  energy  and   perseverance,  had    barely  returned 
from  his  second  expedition  when  he  received  a  new  commission.     The 
Dutch  East  India  Company's  directors  sent  for  him  to  come  to  Am 
sterdam. 

1  See  Historical  Inquiry  concerning  Henry  Hudson,  his  Relations  and  Early  Life,  his  Connec 
tion  with  the  Muscovy  Company,  etc.  By  John  Meredith  Read. 


DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS  TO  NORTH  AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XIII. 

The  directors  resident  at  Amsterdam  decided  that  before  positively 
engaging  Hudson  they  must  wait  for  the  meeting  of  the  Company's 
Council  of  Seventeen,  in  the  following  year.  But  the  repeated  ex 
plorations  undertaken  by  the  Muscovy  Company  had  aroused  others 
beside  the  East  India  Company.  As  soon  as  this  delay  was  an 
nounced,  Hudson  was  approached  by  a  former  officer  of  the  corpora 
tion,  who  had  now,  however,  left  it  and  become  a  keen  opponent  of  its 
plans,  —  one  Le  Maire,  a  French  merchant  in  the  Dutch  city,  —  who 
at  once  sought  to  secure  him  for  the  service  of  France,  and  was  aided 
in  this  design  by  President  Jeannin,  French  ambassador  at  the 
iiia  contract  Hague.1  This  attempt  was  all  that  was  needed  to  spur  the 
Eas*t  India  East  India  directors  into  immediate  decisive  action,  and  they 
company.  signed  a  contract  with  him  on  January  8,  1609.  This  paper 
specified  that  the  directors  should  furnish  a  small  vessel  to  Hudson, 
with  the  needed  outfit,  in  which  he  was  to  sail  as  soon  as  the  favor 
able  season  opened  in  April.  He  was  to  have  a  sum  equivalent  to 
about  three  hundred  and  twenty  dollars  of  our  gold  for  his  expenses, 
and  the  support  of  his  family  during  his  absence  ;  and,  should  he  not 
return,  his  widow  was  to  receive  eighty  dollars  as  an  indemnity  for 
his  loss.  Should  he  find  a  practicable  passage,  he  was  to  receive  a 
suitable  reward,  —  the  clause  promising  this  being  only  generally 
expressed.2 

The  old  theory  of  the  passage  was  rigidly  adhered  to,  both  in  the 
contract  and  in  Hudson's  detailed  instructions.  He  was  to  search  for 
a  passage  "  around  by  the  North  side  of  Nova  Zembla,"  and  he  was 
"  to  think  of  discovering  no  other  routes  or  passages,  except  the  route 
around  by  the  north  and  northeast  above  Nova  Zembla."  3 

Armed  with  memoranda  of  sailing  instructions  which  had  been 
made  by  Barentz  on  his  first  voyage,  and  with  an  ancient  document 
by  a  Greenland  navigator,4  Hudson  made  himself  master  of  the  whole 

1  N&gociation  du  Pres.  Jeannin,  cited  by  Read,  Hist.  Inq.,  p.  140,  and  by  Henry  C.  Mur 
phy,  Hudson  in  Holland. 

2  Mr.  Henry  C.  Murphy,  the  most  successful  of  inquirers  into  the  history  of  Hudson's 
voyage  and  matters  connected  with  it,  discovered  a  copy  of  this  contract  between  Hudson 
and  the  Chamber  of  Amsterdam,  in  the  royal  archives  at  the  Hague.     It  is  given,  with  the 
full  details  of  these  negotiations,  etc.,  in  his  Henry  Hudson  in  Holland- 

8  Murphy's  Hudson,  p.  39,  seq. 

4  This  singular  document  had,  in  the  translation  used  by  Hudson,  the  following  title :  "A 
Treatise  O/"!VER  BOTY,  a  Gronlander,  translated  out  of  the  Norsh  Language  into  llvjh  Dutch 
in  the  ye.ere  1560.  And  after,  out  of  High  Dutch,  into  Low  Dutch,  %  WILLIAM  BARENT- 
SON  of  Amsterdam,  who  was  chiefe  Pilot  aforesaid.  The  same  Copie  in  High  Dutch  is  in  the. 
hands  of  IODOCVS  HONDIVS,  which  I  have  seene.  And  this  was  translated  out  of  Low  Dutch 
by  Master  WILLIAM  STERE,  Marchant,  in  the  yeere  1608,/or  the  use  of  one  HENRIE  HUDSON. 
WILLIAM  BARENTSON'S  BooTce  is  in  the  hands  of  Master  PETER  PLANTIVS,  who  lent  the 
same  to  me."  The  treatise  contains  a  variety  of  quaint  sailing  directions  and  information 
concerning  the  northern  seas  as  known  to  Norse  voyagers  in  the  time  before  Columbus ;  and 


1609.]  HUDSON'S  FIRST  VOYAGE.  347 

plan  he  was  to  carry  out ;  yet  there  are  indications  that  even  before 
his  departure  probabilities  in  a  very  different  direction  had  occurred 
to  him.  In  his  long  consultations  with  Plantius,  the  geographer,  and 
others,  rude  maps  of  regions  far  to  the  west  were  studied,  and  discus 
sions  took  place,  in  which  the  fixed  belief  of  Plantius  as  to  a  north 
eastern  route  appears  to  have  been  called  in  question  by  Hudson.1 

On  Saturday,  the  fourth  of  April,  1609,  Hudson  sailed  from  Am 
sterdam   in  a  yacht  or  Vlie-boat2  named  the  Half  Moon. 

*    -r*         i  -i     -n        T   i  •!  »        •  Departure 

with  a  crew  of  Dutch  and  English  sailors,  numbering,  ac-  of  Hudson, 
cording  to  different  authorities,  sixteen,  eighteen,  or  twenty 
men,  the  smallest  number  probably  being  the  true  one.  The  vessel 
was  of  eighty  tons  burden  —  forty  lasts  by  Dutch  measurement  — and 
had  been  most  carefully  equipped.  By  noon  of  Monday  she  was  off 
the  Texel,  and  the  voyage  was  fairly  begun.  She  steered  away  to  the 
north,  making  up  the  Norway  coast  toward  the  North  Cape,  in  literal 
accordance  with  instructions  to  Hudson,  and  soon  gained  the  regions 
with  which  his  previous  explorations  had  made  him  more  or  less 
familiar.3  On  the  fifth  of  May  he  passed  the  northern  extremity  of 
the  main  land,  and  sailed  directly  toward  Nova  Zembla ;  but  the  sea 
was  filled  with  ice  as  it  had  been  before,  and  he  was  not  long  in  find 
ing  his  progress  as  effectually  barred  in  this  direction  as  it  had  been 
in  preceding  voyages.  His  crew  were  discontented  and  insubordinate  ; 
it  is  said  that  some  of  them,  used  only  to  warmer  climates,  were  un 
able  to  bear  the  cold  of  these  high  latitudes ;  and  besides,  they  were 
of  two  nationalities,  and  seem  to  have  quarrelled  continually. 

The  obstacles  thus  put  in  Hudson's  way  to  the  northeast,  seemingly 

it  further  gives  an  account,  conceded  by  northern  antiquaries  to  he  substantially  correct,  of 
the  Icelandic  colonies  in  Greenland.  It  has  an  interest  of  its  own  apart  from  its  connection 
with  these  voyages;  for  its  antiquity  is  undoubtedly  very  great,  and  it  throws  no  little 
light  on  the  state  of  Greenland  in  the  days  of  its  settled  condition.  The  Treatise  of  Boty 
(or  Bardsem,  as  he  is  generally  called),  has  been  published  with  an  introduction  and  notes, 
by  the  Rev.  B.  F.  De  Costa,  under  the  title  of  Sailin/j  Directions  of  Henry  Hud/ton,  etc. 

1  Van  Meteren,  Historie  der  Nederlanden,  quoted  by  Read,  Historical  Inquiry,  p.  155,  snys 
that  Hudson  showed  Plantius  a  letter  and  maps  of  his  friend  Captain  John  Smith,  in  which 
tbe  latter  explained  that  there  was  a  sea  leading  into  the  Western  Ocean  north  of  the  Eng 
lish  colony. 

2  From  the  river  Vlie,  where  such  boats  were  used.     The  name  passed  into  the  English 
fly-boat. 

8  Of  this  voyage  we  have  several  accounts,  differing  in  no  essential  particular,  but  supple 
menting  each  other  in  many  ways.  John  de  Laet,  who  published  the  Nieuwe  Werelt  in 
1625,  made  use  in  writing  it  of  Hudson's  own  journal,  which  unfortunately  has  not  been 
preserved.  Van  Meteren's  Historie  der  Nederlanden,  published  in  1614,  contains  mate 
rials  which  came  to  its  author  at  first  hand.  But  the  most  minute  record  of  the  voyage  is 
that  made  by  Robert  Juet,  Hudson's  former  mate,  who  acted  on  this  expedition  as  a  cap 
tain's  clerk,  or  kind  of  purser,  and  kept  a  precise  and  probably  exceedingly  accurate  diary 
of  every  matter  of  interest  during  the  whole  duration  of  the  exploration.  His  account 
appears  in  full  in  Purchas,  vol.  iii. 


DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS   TO  NORTH  AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XIII. 

impassable  bars  to  further  discovery,  confirmed  his  doubts  of  the  im 
possibility  of  a  northeastern  passage,  and  led  him  to  take  a  most 
He  changes  important  step.  In  direct  violation  of  his  instructions,  he 
his  course.  offere(j  his  Crew  a  choice  between  two  courses.  One  was  to 
sail  westward,  and,  making  the  American  coast,  to  search  for  a  pas 
sage  where  Captain  John  Smith  had  indicated  the  probability  of  one, 
somewhere  north  of  the  English  colony ;  and  the  other  was  to  keep 
nearer  the  latitude  they  were  in,  and  sailing  directly  to  the  west,  to 
try  again  at  Davis's  Straits.  The  first  proposal  was  adopted,  and  on 
May  14,  nine  days  after  rounding  the  North  Cape,  the  Half  Moon 
was  put  about,  and  headed  west  by  south.  In  two  weeks  she  was 
taking  fresh  water  at  the  Faroe  Islands,  and  in  six  she  lay  safely  off 
the  banks  of  Newfoundland,  the  little  vessel  much  the  worse  for  her 
encounters  with  those  northern  seas. 

Hudson  avoided  a  fleet  of  fishermen  which  lay  off  the  bank ;  and  at 
once  made  his  way  farther  south  and  west.     On  July  12  he 

Visit  to  the  .      i  . 

coast  of         sighted  the  coast  of  the  continent,  and  six  days   later  an- 

Jiiaine.  " 

chored  in  one  of  the  large  bays  on  the  coast  of  what  is  now 
the  State  of  Maine  —  almost  without  doubt  Peiiobscot  Bay  —  where 
his  crew  were  set  to  work  upon  repairs  to  the  vessel.  A  new  fore 
mast  was  brought  from  shore  to  replace  the  one  the  vessel  had  lost  at 
sea,  and  she  was  put  into  thorough  order.  But  Hudson's  stay  here 
was  cut  short  by  an  incident  which,  with  many  other  things  in  this 
expedition,  shows  the  lawless  and  buccaneering  spirit  of  his  crew. 
As  the  Half  Moon  lay  in  the  bay,  two  shallops  filled  with  Indians  ap 
proached  her,  their  crews  looking  for  peaceful  trade  with  the  stran 
gers,  and  such  friendly  intercourse  as  the  French  had  everywhere 
encouraged.  But  Hudson's  men  met  them  in  another  temper.  Man 
ning  a  boat,  they  captured  and  carried  off  one  shallop  ;  and  then,  in 
pure  wantonness,  they  armed  two  skiffs  of  their  own  with  pieces 
which  deserved  their  name  of  "  murderers,"  and  attacked  and  plun 
dered  the  Indian  village  on  the  shore.  The  outrage  fully  warranted 
a  quick  revenge  ;  and  Hudson  feared  it,  —  for  on  the  same  afternoon 
the  ship  was  dropped  down  to  the  entrance  of  the  bay,  and  on  the 
next  day  (July  26),  she  was  again  under  sail  to  the  southwest. 

Though  within  a  week  she  went  aground  on  what  are  now  known 
as  St.  George's  Shoals,  it  was  ten  days  before  her  crew  sighted  land 
again  ;  this  time  at  the  north  end  of  the  headland  of  Cape  Cod, 
which  Hudson,  before  he  knew  it  to  be  Gosnold's  Cape,  promptly 
named  "  New  Holland."  Some  of  the  men  landed  here,  for  they 
fancied  they  heard  people  calling  from  the  shore,  and  that  the  voices 
sounded  like  those  of  "Christians;"  but  they  came  back  after  see 
ing  none  but  savages,  and  the  yacht  again  bore  away  to  sea,  passing 


1609.] 


HUDSON'S  FIRST  VOYAGE. 


349 


Nantucket  and  Martha's  Vineyard,  and  once  more  making  a  straight 
course  to  the  southwest. 

When  Hudson  made  land  again  he  was  close  by  the  entrance  of 
Chesapeake  Bay.     Just  within  it  he  might  have  found  his 
countrymen  on  the  banks  of  the  James,  and  have  consulted  o^D^^f 
his  friend  Smith  about  that  "  sea  leading  into  the  western 
ocean,"  of  which  the  Virginian  captain  had  written  in  the  letter  shown 
to  Plantius.    Perhaps  because  they  were  his  countrymen,  while  he  was 
in  foreign  service,  he   made   no   attempt  to  reach  them,  but   sailed 
away  to  the  northward,  following  the  trend  of  the  coast,  until  he 


Hudson's  Attack  on  the  Indian  Village. 

came  to  the  capes  of  the  great  bay  which  a  few  years  later  was 
named  the  Delaware.  He  tried  to  enter  it,  but  unsuccessfully,  for 
the  Half  Moon  drew  too  much  water  for  its  shallow  bars  ;  so  the 
vessel  again  took  up  her  northward  course,  and  passed  along  a  coast 
that  looked  like  "  broken  islands "  —  the  now  familiar  sand-banks 
of  New  Jersey  —  until,  in  the  evening  of  the  second  of  September, 
the  high  hills  of  Navesinck  were  made  to  the  northward,  and  the 
vessel  came  to  anchor  near  a  shore  that  was  "  a  pleasant  land  to  see." 
The  night  was  fair,  with  little  wind  ;  as  morning  came  a  thick 
mist  settled  about  them,  and  hid  the  pleasant  coast  from  the  explorers; 


350 


DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS  TO  NORTH  AMERICA.      [CHAP.  XIII. 


Enters  the 
lower  har 
bor  of  New 
York. 


but  when  it  had  lifted,  toward  noon  of  the  3d  of  September,  and  they 
had  made  their  way  along  the  long,  curving  sand-spit  that 
extended  just  beyond  the  hills  near  which  they  had  lain, 
they  saw  before  them  what  they  thought  were  three  great 
rivers.  The  northernmost  seemed  to  them  the  broadest,  but  they 
could  not  enter  it  because  of  the  bar  across  its  mouth  ;  and  com 
ing  back  to  the  deeper  one  —  the  passage  through  which  Verrazano's 
boats,  it  is  supposed,  had  passed  nearly  a  century  before  into  the 
"  most  beautiful  bay  "  —the  Half  Moon  floated  slowly  past  the  sandy 
cape,  and  cast  anchor,  at  nightfall,  just  within  its  shelter. 


The  Approach  to  the   Narrows. 

When  the  next  morning  dawned,  the  whole  broad  bay  lay  in  view ; 
and  the  explorers,  little  dreaming  how  their  judgment  was  to  be  con 
firmed  in  centuries  to  come,  decided,  as  they  shifted  their  anchorage 
to  the  greater  security  of  the  "  Horseshoe  "  further  inside  Sandy 
Hook,  that  it  was  "  a  very  good  harbour."  Across  it,  to  the  north, 
they  could  see  an  island  with  low  hills,  beside  which  another  great 
river  ran  out  from  the  land  ;  on  the  east  the  coast  trended  away  in  a 
long  ridge  ;  and  on  the  west  a  vast  curve  of  low,  wooded  shore  ex 
tended  from  where  the  Half  Moon  lay  to  the  mouth  of  a  third  river, 
barely  in  sight  in  the  northwest.  The  wondering  Indians  crowded 
the  beach  near  by ;  and  though  their  own  traditions  represent  them 
as  alarmed  and  troubled  at  the  strangers'  corning,  they  put  off  in  their 
canoes  to  the  vessel,  and  seemed  to  the  crew  to  welcome  them  with 
delight. 


1609.]  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  HUDSON  RIVER.  351 

The  boats,  while  the  vessel  lay  at  anchor,  were  busy  in  the  ex 
ploration  of  the  bay.  On  the  4th,  a  boat's  crew  put  out  to  fish ; 
and,  according  to  an  Indian  tradition,  landed  on  the  long  beach  of 
Congu,  or  Coney  Island,  the  first  Europeans  who  trod  the  shore  of 
the  great  New  Netherland  harbor.  On  the  6th,  another  crew  rowed 
across  the  broad  expanse  between  the  vessel  and  the  more  distant 
island  ;  and  passing  through  the  "river"  which  we  now  call  the  Nar 
rows,  explored  the  strait  on  the  west  side  of  the  harbor,  running  be 
tween  the  island  and  the  main,  the  "  Kills  "  of  later  times.  But 
as  they  came  back  through  these,  past  shores  which  were 
"  as  pleasant  with  grass  and  flowers,  and  goodly  trees,  as  ever 
they  had  seen,"  they  were  set  upon  by  two  canoe-crews  of  Indians- 
Indians,  who  shot  a  flight  of  arrows  at  them,  and  then  made  off 
under  cover  of  the  darkness  of  an  approaching  stormy  night,  leav 
ing  an  Englishman,  John  Colman,  dead  in  the  boat,  and  two  others 
wounded. 

Losing  their  way  in  the  night  and  storm,  the  diminished  crew  only 
regained  the  vessel  late  in  the  morning  of  the  next  day.  At  noon 
they  buried  the  dead  man  in  the  sand  on  the  beach,  and  gave  to 
Sandy  Hook,  in  memory  of  him,  the  name  of  Colman's  Point, —  a 
title  it  did  not  long  retain.  The  yacht  was  put  in  a  condition  of 
defence,  for  no  one  knew  whether  the  attack  upon  the  boat  was  not 
the  prelude  to  general  hostilities ;  but  though  the  Indians,  during  the 
next  few  days,  made  some  demonstrations  that  were  interpreted  by 
the  crew  as  hostile,  nothing  more  serious  happened.  Two  Indian  cap 
tives  were  kept  on  the  vessel,  the  men  putting  red  coats  upon  them 
and  holding  them  as  hostages  ;  but  there  was  no  attack. 

The  Half  Moon  had  spent  a  week  in  the  lower  bay,  her  crew  thus 
exploring  the  shores  and  trading  with  the  people,  when  Hudson,  after 
several  times  changing  his  anchorage,  and  drawing  nearer  the  mouth 
of  the  Narrows,  decided  to  push  on  into  the  great  river. 

On  the  twelfth  of  September,  an  afternoon  when  it  was  very  "  faire 
and  hot  "  along  the  shores  of  the  wooded  islands  that  lay  on  either 
side  of  the  broad  passage,  his  little  vessel  floated  up  with  the  floodtide, 
through  the  quiet  strait  which  her  discovery  was  to  make  a  thorough 
fare  for  the  world.  The  hills  of  Staten  Island  were  covered 

.,  t.ii-iit'i  11  The  Kills  of 

with  "  great  and  tall  oaks,    and  "•  very  sweet  smells  came   staten  isi- 
from  them  ;"  and  the  high  terminal  ridge  of  Long  Island  was 
wooded  to  the  water's  edge.     The  channel  probably  seemed   broader 
than  we  see  it,  for  its  surface  and  shores  were  unbroken,  and  the  inner 
bay  that  lay  before  the  explorers  widened  more  gradually  from  the 
strait  than  now.     At  the  mouth  of   the  Kills  lay  projecting  rocks, 
the  present  name  of  which  is  a  corruption  of  the   old  title  "  Robyn's 


352 


DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS  TO  NORTH  AMERICA.     [CHAP.  XIII. 


Robyn's  Rift. 


Rift,"1  that  marked  them  as  the  favorite  haunt  of  seals.  The  main 
land  on  the  west  was  bordered  by  a  broad  marsh,  as  now  ;  but  every- 
^^-_^.-_-_^^__  _  where  else  the  shore  was 

covered  with  trees,  even  at 
the  northern  limit  of  the 
view,  where -a  few  little 
islands  dotted  the  surface 
near  a  rounded  point,  be 
side  which  opened  still 
further  reaches  of  the 
great  river.  The  stran 
ger  sailed  across*  the 
great  and  beautiful  bay, 
going  up  slowly  with  the 
tide  and  anchoring  at 
night ;  the  people  crowded 
about  her  in  canoes,  and 
brought  corn  and  tobacco,  "  making  show  of  love." 

As  the  yacht  entered  the  broad  mouth  of  the  river  that  stretched 

away  to  the  north  in  long  still  reaches  over  which  "  no  Christian  "  had 

ever  sailed  before,  it  is  not  strange  that  her  crew  were  amazed 

Sail   up   the  ... 

Hudson  at  the  strong  current,  and  began  its  exploration  with  intense 
curiosity  as  to  where  so  vast  a  stream  might  lead  them. 
Their  progress  was  slow.  They  floated  with  a  light  wind  past  the 
long  shore  of  Manhattan  Island,  then  more  wild  and  rugged  than 
any  of  the  scenery  that  lay  about  it,  its  stony  hills  scantily  wooded, 
and  its  rough  beach  broken  by  rocky  inlets.  Beyond  it  the  eastern 
bank  grew  higher,  and  gentle  in  its  slope  ;  but  on  the  other  side  of 
the  stream  the  rocky  palisades  began,  overlooking  the  lonely  river  and 
towering  above  the  solitary  ship  as  though  they  shut  out  some  still 
stranger  region  of  the  silent  country  into  which  the  discoverers  were 
following  an  unknown  way. 

When  the  river  broadened  into  the  great  bays  above  —  the  "  Tap- 
paan  Zee  "   and    "  Haverstroo  "  of    later    New  Netherland 

The  Half-        r 

Moon  at  the  topography  —  the  voyagers  sailed  more  fearlessly  and  rap 
idly  ;  the  long  cape  or  hook  was  passed  which  later  Dutch 
sailors  called  Verdrietig  (tedious),  because  it  remained  so  long  in 
sight ;  but  with  the  quickly  narrowing  current  beyond,  the  land  sud 
denly  grew  high  and  mountainous  in  what  seemed  the  very  path 
of  the  vessel,  and  the  scenery  about  her  became  darker  and  wilder. 
As  she  passed,  just  before  nightfall,  through  the  narrow  gap  in  the 
mountains  that  had  seemed  to  stand  unbroken  in  her  way,  the  lonely 

1  Robyn's  Rift  —  i.  e.  Seal  Reef  —  now  called  Robin's  Reef. 


1609.] 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  HUDSON  RIVER. 


353 


Verdrietig  Hoeck. 


ship   came   into   the   heavy  shadow  of    the   great   Donderberg,  and 

into  the  stillness  which  always  lies,  even  now,  over  the  long,  dark 

reach  between  the  Hudson  Highlands.     As  it  grew  dark,  the  explorers 

anchored  near  where  the  high  promontory  of  West  Point  extends  into 

the    stream,  the 

densely     wooded 

mountains  about 

it      making      an 

amphitheatre 

through       which 

the  river  runs  in 

the  deep  shadows 

of  its  sides.  They 

were  in  the  midst 

of    an    unbroken 

wilderness     such 

as  they  had  never 

seen  before ;  and 

the   little   yacht, 

anchored  at  night, 

with    her    lights 

marking  the  one  gleam  of  life  in  the  silent  expanse  of  river  and 

forest,  might  well  have  seemed  to  her  crew  to  be  strangely  lost  and 

isolated  in  the  darkness  and  stillness  of  a  region  unknown  to  civilized 

men. 

The  morning  following  this  first  night  in  the  Highlands  was  misty 
and  still ;  and  while  the  fog  hid  the  river  from  view  Hudson's  two 
Indian  hostages  slipped  out  of  a  port  and  swam  quietly  away ;  but 
when  the  weather  cleared,  and  the  Half  Moon  got  under  way,  they 
were  seen  on  the  shore,  calling  to  the  crew  "  in  scorn."  The  yacht 
passed  on  with  a  fair  wind  among  the  hills  ;  all  day,  indeed,  she  had 
mountains  in  sight ;  and  at  night  anchored  where  the  higher  Catskills 
lie  a  little  back  from  the  river  side.  Here  the  crew  found  "  very  lov 
ing  people,  and  very  old  men  ;  "  and  lay  for  a  day  at  anchor,  filling 
their  casks  with  water,  and  bartering  with  the  Indians  for  their  corn, 
pompions  (pumpkins),  and  tobacco. 

At  this  point  the  river  navigation  changed,  the  stream  growing 
shallower  and  more  difficult,  so  that  in  the  run  of  the  next  few  days 
the  vessel  sometimes  grounded,  but  without  injury,  upon  the  soft, 
"  ozie  r'  shoals.  The  scenery  changed  as  the  banks  grew  lower,  and 
fertile  plains  bordered  the  stream.  On  the  eighteenth  Hudson  himself 
went  ashore,  near  where  the  town  that  bears  his  name  now  stands ; 
and  visited  an  old  chief  who  seemed  to  be  a  governor  of  the  country, 


354 


DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS  TO  NORTH  AMERICA.     [CHAP.  XIII. 


and  who  showed  him  how  great  store  of  maize  and  other  provision  lay 

in  his  village,  and  how  the  young  men  of  his  tribe  could  "  make  good 

cheer  "  for  their  guest,  killing  game  and  feasting  him  roy- 

tertalnea  bny  ally.     When  the  captain  insisted  upon  returning  to  his  ship 

toward  the  close  of  the  day,  they  fancied  it  was  from  fear, 

and  to  show  him  that  he  had  no  cause  for  it,  they  took  their  arrows, 

broke  them  in  pieces  and  threw  them  into  the  fire.     But  he  refused 

to  stay  longer  and  returned  on  board  the  yacht. 

With   the  run  of   the  next  day  the  vessel  reached  the  limit  of 
her  voyage.     She  lay  near  the  present  site  of  Albany  ;  the 
river naviga-  water  was  fresh,  the  stream  constantly  growing   shallower 
and  narrower.     If,  when  he  entered  it,  Hudson  had  enter 
tained  a  notion  that  this  might  be  a  passage  to  the  South  Sea,  he 

must  now  have  been  persuaded  that  it  was 
only  a  river  flowing  from  far  to  the  north. 
Lying  for  four  days  at  his  anchorage,  he 
sent  out  boats  to  sound  the  stream  above, — 
on  the  twentieth  as  far  as  the  shoals  near 


Limit  of  Hudson's  Voyage. 

where  Troy  stands,  and  on  the  twenty-second  to  a  little  distance  be 
yond  Waterford,  a  place  where  the  village  of  Half-Moon  still  com 
memorates  the  farthest  point  of  his  exploration.  Both  boats  returned 
with  the  same  report,  —  a  narrowing  shallow  river,  flowing  between  low 
banks,  over  shoals  impassable  for  the  yacht ;  and  dwindling  as  they 
passed  up  it,  so  that  there  seemed  to  be  no  hope  of  greater  depth  beyond.1 

1  The  precise  point  reached  by  Hudson  has  always  been  a  matter  of  some  dispute,  for  a 
very  little  study  shows  that  the  measurements  of  "  leagues  "  given  in  Juet's  Journal  are  not 
to  be  relied  upon.  De  Laet  says  Hudson  reached  lat.  43°,  which  would  be  about  twenty- 
five  miles  above  Albany,  and  fifteen  above  Waterford.  A  Collection  of  Dutch  East  India 
Voyar/es,  a  work  cited  by  Moulton  in  Yates'  and  Moulton's  History  of  New  York,  vol.  i.,  part 


1609.]  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  HUDSON  RIVER.  355 

The  captain,  who  had  not  been  idle  while  his  boats  were  thus  en 
gaged,  now  put  his  vessel  about,  and  prepared  for  the  return  to  the 
river's  mouth.  While  he  lay  in  the  stream,  his  men  putting  the 
spars  in  order,  or  trading  as  before  with  the  always  friendly  natives 
for  otter  skins  and  fruits,  he  had  entertained  the  chief  men  of  the 
country  at  a  feast,  the  story  of  which  lingered  for  two  hundred  years 
in  their  traditions.1 

It  was  here,  where  Hudson  gave  the  chiefs  "  much  wine  and  aqua 
vitce"  that  the  northern  Indians  first  saw  a  drunken  man ;  and  A  drunken 
"  they  did  not  know  how  to  take  it,"  thinking  him  bewitched,  Indlan- 
and  bringing  charms  ("stripes  of  beads  "),  to  save  him  from  the  stran 
gers'  arts.  But  when  the  old  chief  promptly  recovered  on  the  next 
day,  after  "  sleeping  all  night  quietly,"  and  professed  himself  much  de 
lighted  with  the  experience,  they  held  the  whites  in  high  honor,  and 
made  Hudson  "  an  oration  ;  "  and  as  the  Half  Moon  sailed  away  down 
the  river,  between  the  pleasant  banks  of  the  reach  below,  they  fol 
lowed  with  friendly  farewells,  and  hearty  regrets  at  their  guests'  de 
parture. 

For  two  days  of  her  downward  voyage,  the  yacht  made  such  slow 
progress  as  the  troublesome  navigation  and  frequent  shoals 
permitted  ;  but  on  the  third,  a  stiff  gale  blew  from  the  south,  down  the 
and  for  two  days  more  she  lay  at  anchor,  while  the  crew 
brought  wood,  nuts,  and  fruit  from  the  shore.     They  were  but  a  few 
miles  from  the  place  where  they  "  had  first  found  loving  people  "  ; 
and  canoes  came  up  from  the  friendly  village,  bringing  the  old  chief 
who  had  so  amazed  his  companions  at  the  revel  a  few  days   before, 

1,  p.  248,  note,  says  he  went  to  42°  40',  but  gives  no  indication  as  to  whether  it  means  that  the 
Half  Moon  reached  this  point,  or  only  the  boat.  Lambrechtsen  (Beschryving,  etc.,  quoted 
by  Moulton  and  others)  agrees  with  De  Laet.  Mr.  George  Folsom,  in  editing  Juet's  Jour 
nal  (extracts)  in  the  N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  vol.  i.,  says :  "  the  boat  probably  reached  Castle 
Island  (now  called  Patroon's  Island,  just  below  Albany) ; "  and  he  does  not  believe  the  ship 
approached  Albany  at  all.  Brodhead  (Hist.  State  N.  Y.,  vol.  i.,  p.  31)  thinks  the  boat  went 
"  probably  to  some  distance  above  Waterford,"  on  the  22d.  In  the  text,  we  have  adopted, 
after  a  careful  comparison,  the  theory  of  Yates  and  Moulton.  Their  account  nearly  agrees 
with  De  Laet,  who  had  Hudson's  journal  before  him,  with  Lambrechtsen,  and  with  Juet's 
descriptions. 

1  A  tradition  of  the  first  coming  of  the  whites,  in  which  this  scene  had  special  prominence, 
existed  among  the  Iroquois  or  Six  Nations,  nearly  two  centuries  afterward.  A  similar 
tradition  current  among  the  Dela wares  (especially  the  Mohican  branch)  was  carefully  re 
corded  about  1760  by  the  Reverend  John  Heckewelder,  a  Moravian  missionary  among  the 
Pennsylvania  Indians.  In  1801  he  gave  his  account  of  it  to  Dr.  Miller,  who  placed  the  MS. 
in  the  library  of  the  New  York  Historical  Society.  This  paper,  which  purports  to  give  the 
tradition  verbatim  as  it  came  from  the  lips  of  "  aged  and  respected  Delawares,  Monseys,  and 
Mahicanni,"  is  quoted  at  length  by  Brodhead,  in  note  A  of  his  appendix  to  Hist.  State  of 
N.  Y.,  vol.  i. ;  also  by  Yates  and  Moulton,  i.  1,  p.  252.  See  also  Dr.  Miller's  address  in 
N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  vol.  i.,  p.  35  ;  and  pp.  71,  73;  Hist,  and  Lit.  Transactions  of  the  Am. 
Philo.  Soc.,  vol.  i.  (Philadelphia,  1819).  Singularly  enough  it  places  the  scene  of  the  revel 
on  Manhattan  Island. 


356  DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS  TO  NORTH  AMERICA.     [CHAP.  XIII. 

and  who  again  received  Hudson's  hospitality,  though  it  is  not  recorded 
that  he  repeated  his  experience  of  aqua  vitce.  He  brought  a  friend 
with  him,  and  women,  who  behaved  themselves  with  modesty  ;  and 
as  he  went  away  he  made  signs  that  the  crew  should  come  to  his  vil 
lage,  to  be  feasted  in  their  turn.  But  with  the  next  morning  a  fair 
wind  came ;  and  leaving  the  old  man  "  very  sorrowful,"  the  Half 
Moon  sailed  away  down  the  stream,  only  delaying  awhile  in  the  bay 
now  overlooked  by  Newburg,  before  she  again  made  her  way  among 
the  points  and  eddy  winds  of  the  Highlands. 

The  old  man's  regrets  at  his  white  friends'  departure  would  prob 
ably  have  been  less  keen,  if  he  could  have  foreseen  that  before  many 
days  were  over,  they  were  to  commit  an  act  of  very  foolish  and  wanton 
cruelty  against  some  of  his  fellow-Indians.  As  the  vessel  anchored  at 
the  mouth  of  Haverstraw  Bay,  at  noon  of  the  first  of  October,  the 
A  thievish  day  of  her  passage  through  the  kills,  the  "people  of  the 
Indian.  mountains  "  came  flocking  aboard  her  as  before.  But  among 
them,  wondering  at  the  ship  and  weapons,  was  one  savage  of  thievish 
propensities,  who  took  the  opportunity  to  climb  by  the  rudder  into 
a  cabin  window,  and  steal  therefrom  "  a  pillow,  and  two  shirts,  and 
two  bandeleers."  1  As  he  was  making  off  with  this  trifling  booty, 
he  was  seen  by  the  mate,  who  forthwith  shot  him  in  the  breast  and 
killed  him ;  and  then,  all  the  rough  brutality  of  the  crew  being 
aroused,  the  boats  were  manned,  a  general  pursuit  began,  and  another 
Indian,  who  tried  to  seize  one  of  the  boats  as  he  swam,  shared  the  fate 
of  his  fellow. 

This  was  the  first  interruption  of  the  harmony  between  the  Indians 
and  whites  since  the  death  of  Colman  ;  but  it  was  to  be  followed  by 
more  serious  trouble.  The  next  day,  as  the  yacht  reached  Manhattan, 
one  of  the  two  savages  who  had  been  prisoners  on  her  and  escaped, 
appeared  with  many  followers,  approaching  with  evidently  hostile 
Affray  with  intent.  When  they  were  not  suffered  to  come  alongside, 
the  savages.  ^ney  called  to  their  aid  two  canoes  filled  with  armed  men, 
who  ran  under  the  stern  of  the  vessel  and  shot  a  flight  of  arrows 
at  her,  but  without  doing  harm.  The  crew  replied  by  a  half  dozen 
musket-shots,  two  or  three  of  which  took  effect,  and  drove  the  savages 
to  shore.  But  more  than  a  hundred  now  gathered  near  the  upper  end 
of  Manhattan  Island,  where,  when  scattered  by  shot  from  a  falcon  on 
the  yacht,  some  of  them  manned  still  another  canoe,  and  were  only 
driven  off  after  severe  execution  had  been  done  among  them.  The 
Half  Moon  withdrew  across  the  river,  and  anchored  under  the  high 
bank  at  Hoboken,  passing  a  stormy  night  and  day  under  its  shelter, 
but  receiving  no  further  attack.  She  had  again  reached  the  mouth 

1  A  bandoleer,  meaning  a  short  sword  or  cutlass. 


1609.]  HUDSON'S  RETURN  TO  ENGLAND.  357 

of  the  great  river  which  she  had  been  the  first  vessel  to  ascend  ;  her 
disorderly  crew  were  little  inclined  for  any  fresh  adventures ;  and 
disputes,  which  continued  even  after  she  set  sail,  had  begun,  as  to  her 
next  destination.  As  she  again  weighed  anchor  and  sailed  across  the 
upper  bay,  whose  shores  may  have  begun  already  to  show  the  bright 
colors  of  autumn  foliage,  officers  and  crew  wrangled  over  their  plans 
for  the  future.  The  Dutch  mate  desired  to  winter  in  Newfoundland, 
and  explore  Davis'  Straits  during  the  next  spring ;  the  crew  "  threat 
ened  savagely  "  if  they  were  not  taken  back  to  Europe  ;  and  Hudson's 
Hudson  feared  their  violence,  and  wished  besides  to  carry  the  November 
news  of  his  discoveries  at  once  to  Holland.  It  was  not  until  1609- 
the  yacht  had  passed  through  the  Kills  on  her  outward  route,  and  had 
dropped  below  Sandy  Hook,  that  a  compromise  was  at  last  effected. 
It  was  decided  to  make  first  of  all  for  the  British  Islands,  and  two  days 
later  they  were  well  out  at  sea  upon  an  eastern  course.  The  voyage 
was  prosperous ;  and  on  the  seventh  of  November  the  ship  lay  safely 
in  Dartmouth  Harbor,  her  turbulent  sailors  contented  for  the  time, 
and  her  master  sending  his  report  to  the  Amsterdam  directors  of  the 
Dutch  East  India  Company. 

Hudson  had  of  course  intended  to  go  in  person  to  his  employers, 
as  soon  as  he  should  reach  a  European  port ;  but  he  was  not  per 
mitted  to  do  so.  In  spite  of  the  frequency  with  which,  at  that  period, 
men  entered  foreign  service,  the  obligations  of  nationality  were  arbi 
trarily  enforced  when  any  advantage  was  to  be  gained  there 
by  ;  and  the  English  government  saw  that  they  had  let  a  tion  in  Eng- 
man  of  too  great  ability  enter  the  employ  of  their  energetic 
neighbors.  When  the  news  of  the  Half  Moon's  arrival  was  received  in 
London  an  order  was  issued  forbidding  her  captain  to  leave  the  coun 
try,  and  reminding  him  and  the  Englishmen  on  his  vessel  that  they 
owed  their  services  to  their  own  nation.  Hudson  entered  again  the 
employ  of  the  Muscovy  Company,  to  whose  efforts  his  success  seems 
to  have  given  new  energy  ;  and  in  the  spring  of  1610  he  sailed  on  his 
last  and  fatal  voyage  to  the  northwest,  to  be  abandoned  by  his  brutal 
crew  among  the  ice-fields  of  the  great  and  desolate  bay  which  bears 
his  name  and  was  the  last  of  his  discoveries.  The  Half  Moon  was 
detained  for  months  at  Dartmouth,  and  was  only  permitted  to  return 
to  Amsterdam  in  July  of  the  year  of  her  captain's  departure. 

Hudson's  discovery  was  received  in  the  Netherlands  in  a  way  char 
acteristic  of  the  people.     It  had  opened  to  the  government 

(•     i        o  ,-*.  ,,  i  i    r         M  •  11     Indifference 

oi  the  btates  General  a  broad  and  fertile  territory,  untouched  of  the  Dutch 

1      £  1  -n  •  111111'  *°  thsir 

betore  by  any  European  nation,  and  undoubtedly  their  own  American 

.  discoveries. 

by  right  of  first  occupation  ;  yet  this  seems  to  have  been  only 

a  secondary  consideration  in  their  minds.     Territorial  increase  seemed 


358  DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS  TO  NORTH  AMERICA.    [CHAP.  XIII. 

at  first  sight  a  comparatively  unimportant  matter ;  the  first  thought 
of  government  and  people  was  the  commercial  value  of  the  new  region. 
For  several  years  the  States  did  little  in  the  matter  but  to  give  official 
information  about  the  situation  of  the  new  river  and  the  course  nec 
essary  to  reach  it,  formal  inquiries  on  these  subjects  having  reached 
them  from  the  cities  of  Amsterdam,  Rotterdam,  Enckhuysen,  and 
Hoorn.  They  did  not  in  set  terms  affirm  their  right  to  the  discovered 
territory,  extend  its  boundaries  indefinitely,  as  England,  France,  and 
Spain  had  done  in  similar  cases,  or  make  grants  to  encourage  coloni 
zation  —  an  idea  which  does  not  seem  even  to  have  occurred  to  them 
until  very  much  later.  This  was  not  the  course  of  the  government 
alone ;  the  East  India  Company  itself  did  nothing  farther  with  regard 
to  the  west.  The  short  passage  to  Cathay  was  still  the  absorbing 
scheme  with  its  directors ;  another  unsuccessful  expedition  was  soon 
to  be  sent  to  the  northeast,  urged  by  the  indefatigable  Plantius.  The 
discovery  of  the  "Great  River  of  the  Mountains"  by  Hudson  did 
not  seem  to  them  a  compensation  for  his  failure  to  find  a  Northeast 
passage. 

While  these  stood  aloof,  however,  private  enterprise,  as  so  often  be 
fore  in  Holland,  stepped  in  to  seize  the  advantages  of  the 

Begintiing  of 

the  fur         new  region.     No  sooner  had  the  Half  Moon  come  back  to 

trade 

Amsterdam,  than  a  few  shrewd  merchants  of  the  city,  who 
saw  the  advantage  of  buying  costly  furs  for  trifles  from  ignorant  and 
friendly  savages,  engaged  a  part  of  her  crew  to  guide  a  vessel  of  their 
own  to  the  great  bay  and  river,  and  bring  her  back  laden  with  good 
peltries.  The  venture  was  highly  successful ;  and  a  trade  quickly 
sprang  up,  that  constantly  attracted  new  vessels  and  fresh  competi 
tion,  and  grew  quietly  but  steadily  till  it  held  a  high  place  in  Nether- 
land  commerce,  and  furnished  a  new  channel  for  the  private  capital 
now  set  free  from  the  dangers  and  disturbances  of  the  long  Spanish 
war. 

Thus  the  three  years  following  the  return  of  Hudson's  expedition  saw 

the  lonely  "  River  of  the  Mountains  "  traversed  by  the  little 
ing  boats  m  round-prowed  vessels  of  the  Dutch,  with  their  crews  of  eager 

the  Hudson.  .  -  1  . 

traders,  making  their  slow  way  up  or  down  the  stream  from 
one  Indian  village  to  another  ;  or  lying  at  anchor  in  the  sheltered  bays, 
while  canoes  laden  with  skins  thronged  about  them,  and  the  savages 
flocked  aboard  for  the  beads  and  knives  and  hatchets  which  they 
took  in  payment.  Manhattan  Island,  though  only  a  fort  and  one  or 
two  small  buildings  had  been  erected  upon  it  —  perhaps  not  even 
these  till  1613 — had  become  the  chief  station  for  the  collection  of  the 
peltries  and  their  shipment  to  home  ports ;  and  an  unsuccessful  at 
tempt  even  had  been  made  to  keep  European  goats  and  rabbits  there 


1614.] 


EXPEDITIONS  OF  ADRIAEN  BLOCK. 


359 


for  the  traders'  use. a  The  river  began  to  be  called  Mauritius,  after 
the  Stadtholder  Maurice  of  Orange.  Not  only  its  waters,  but  the 
bays  of  the  present  New  Jersey,  and  the  coast  as  far  south  as  Dela 
ware  Bay,  were  embraced  in  the  territory  of  the  Dutch  fur-trade  ; 
and  the  energetic  Netherland  seamen  began  to  push  out  right  and  left 
from  their  new  station,  and  to  add  fresh  discoveries  to  their  scanty 
knowledge  of  the  neighboring  shores. 

Foremost  in  these  enterprises  were  Hendrick  Christaensen,  Adriaen 
Block,  and   Cornelis  Jacobsen  May,  three  Dutch  captains,  Firsttradmg 
who,  by  the  end  of  the  four  years  following  Hudson's  voy-  post  buUt- 
age,  had  grown  most  familiar  with  the  new  region,  and  had  engaged 
their  ships  most  successfully  in  its  trade.     Christaensen,  who  by  that 
time  had  made  ten  voyages  to  the  river,  built  the  first  great  trading 
post  upon  it,  in  1614,  —  Fort  Nassau,  on  Castle  Island,  close  by  Al 
bany,  —  and  was  appointed  its  commander.     Block  spent  the  winter 
of  1613-14  on  Manhattan  Island,  in  building  a  yacht  of  six-  Exploring 
teen  tons,  the   Onrust  (Restless),  to  take  the  place  of  his  Iayr*fen°f 
ship,  the  Tiger,  which  had  accidentally  been  burned.     In  Block> 
the  spring  he  sailed  eastward,  passing  through  the  rapids  of  Hell-Gate 
in  the  East  River, 
explored       Long 
Island    Sound 
from  end  to  end, 
discovered       and 
entered  the  Quo- 
nehtacut,  or  Con 
necticut      River, 
and  made  his  way 
up  the  New  Eng 
land  coast  as  far 
as  what  he  called 
Pye  Bay,  —  now 
the   bay  of    Na- 
hant,  — which  he 
called  "  the  limit 
of    New  Nether- 
land."  He  visited 
the  shores  of  Nar- 

ragansett  Bay,  and  saw  within  it  that  "Roode"  or  "Red"  island 
.from  which  the  modern  State  of  Rhode  Island  derives  its  name. 

1  Wassenaar's  Historische  Verhael,  vol.  ix.,  p.  44,  quoted  by  Brodhead,  vol.  i.,  p.  47.  Cap 
tain  Argall  is  said,  on  doubtful  authority,  to  have  visited  Manhattan  Island,  on  his  return 
from  Port  Royal,  and  to  have  found  four  or  five  houses  there. 


360 


DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS  TO  NORTH  AMERICA.     [CHAP.  XIII. 


Block   Island. 


Martha's  Vineyard  and  Nantucket  the  Dutch  named  Texel  and  Vie- 
land  ;  the  waters  surrounding  them  the  Zuyder  Zee  ;  the  island  which 
still  bears  Block's  name,  northeast  of  Montauk  Point,  they  called 
"  Visscher's  Hoeck."  Meeting  Hendrick  Christaensen's  ship,  the  For 
tune,  which  had  been  sent 
to  Cape  Cod  Bay  perhaps 
to  take  him  on  board, 
Block  transferred  the 
Restless  to  another  skip 
per,  Cornelis  Hendricksen, 
and  sailed  in  the  other  ves 
sel  to  Holland,  adding  his 
report  to  the  list  of  explo 
rations  which  revealed  the 
extent  and  wealth  of  the 
new  country. 

May  had  seen  "  Vis 
scher's  Hoeck  "  even  be 
fore  Block,  and  had  vis 
ited  the  coast  of  Martha's  Vineyard.  But  his  name  is  perpetuated 
farther  south,  in  the  Cape  May  of  Southern  New  Jersey  ;  though 
New  York  bay  was  for  many  years  called,  in  his  honor,  Port  Ma\. 

It  was  now  four  years  since  Henry  Hudson's  crew  had  returned  to 
Amsterdam,  and  the  trade  with  the  Mauritius  River  had  aroused  so 
brisk  a  competition  as  to  alarm  the  few  merchants  who  had  been  the 
first  to  engage  in  it.  With  the  spirit  of  an  age  when  the  right  of 
monopoly  was  firmly  believed  in  and  looked  upon  as  the  protection  of 
commerce,  they  had  already  urged  upon  the  States  General  the  pas 
sage  of  an  ordinance  to  protect  them  from  those  who  were  interfer 
ing  with  a  traffic  which,  as  they  believed,  belonged  only  to  them. 
They  had  succeeded  so  far  as  to  secure  (March  20,  1614)  a  decree  in 
general  terms,  by  which  any  discoverers  of  "  new  passages,  havens, 
lands,  or  places,"  should  have  "  the  exclusive  right  of  navigating  to 
the  same  for  four  voyages,"  provided  they  reported  their  discoveries 
within  fourteen  days  after  their  return  to  Holland.  But  the  pas 
sage  of  this  act  was  only  a  preliminary  step.  With  Block's  return 
in  September  they  began  to  press  for  a  special  charter  ;  and  pro 
vided  with  a  carefully-drawn  "  figurative  map  "  of  the  new  country, 
they  appeared  before  the  assembly  of  the  States,  detailed  to  that 
body  the  merits  of  their  work,  the  great  risk,  expense,  and  effort  to 
which  they  had  been  put,  and  asked  to  be  protected.  Under  the 
conditions  of  the  ordinance  of  March,  with  the  terms  of  which  they 
had  complied,  and  which  had,  indeed,  been  the  spur  of  Block  and 


1614.]  THE  NEW  NETHERLAND  COMPANY.  361 

the  rest  in  their  discoveries,  there  could  be  no  hesitation ;  and  their 
charter  was  granted  on  the  llth  of  October,  —  a  charter  in  which 
the  name  "  New  Netherland  "  was  first  officially  applied  to  New  Nether. 
the  American  region  "  between  New  France  and  Virginia,  ^anteuo**1 
being  the  seacoasts  between  40°  and  45°."  The  New  Neth-  t^^ch 
erland  Company  were  given  the  monopoly  of  the  trade  1614- 
for  three  years  from  January  1,  1615,  and  no  other  Dutch  citizens 
were  to  be  permitted  to  "  frequent  or  navigate  "  those  "  newly-dis 
covered  lands,  havens,  or  places,"  "  on  penalty  of  the  confiscation  of 
the  vessel  and  cargo,  besides  a  fine  of  fifty  thousand  Netherlands 
ducats." 

The  prescribed  three  years  passed  quietly  and  prosperously  away, 
every  trading  voyage  of  the  company  bringing  in  enormous  profits 
to  the  Amsterdam  proprietors  ;  while  in  the  great  region  now  laid 
open  to  their  enterprise,  new  explorations  were  undertaken 

'  Aimsandac- 

and  new  resources  opened.     It  was  a  development  or  trade,  compiisn- 

P-I  i  p  i        -VT          -k-r      i  ment  of  the 

rather  than  or  the  country,  however;  tor  the  JNew  Nether-  Netherland 
land  Company  had  no  interest  in  the  future  of  a  territory  in 
which  they  held  so  short-lived  a  title ;  they  had  no  motive  to  colonize 
it  or  test  its  agricultural  capacities  ;  their  aim  was  naturally  to  get 
from  it  all  the  gain  they  could  in  the  little  time  given  them,  and  leave 
to  others  the  uncertain  experiments  which  might  come  after.  If  this 
system  had  its  evils,  it  had  also  its  benefits.  It  led  to  constant  search 
for  new  trading  grounds,  and  thus  brought  about  a  more  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  geography  of  the  neighboring  region  than  settled 
colonists  might  have  gained  in  many  years.  It  kept  up  constant  com 
munication  with  Europe,  so  important  to  a  distant  settlement.  Best 
of  all,  it  established  friendly  relations  with  the  Indians  wherever  the 
traders  met  them  ;  and  these,  though  often  one-sided,  were  founded 
on  mutual  interest,  and  differed  entirely  from  the  enmity  and  fear 
which  were  usually  the  immediate  result  of  any  intercourse,  however 
brief,  between  Europeans  and  Indians. 

Even  the  murder  of  Hendrick  Christaensen,  by  one  of  two  Indians 
whom  he  had  long  before  taken  on  a  voyage  to  Holland,  but  had 
restored  safely  to  their  homes,  did  not  change  the  friendly  attitude 
of  the  whites,  though  they  promptly  punished  the  murderer.  The  Com. 
Just  before  Christaensen's  death  he  had  finished  the  trading-  f0a°yin  New " 
house  and  defences  at  Fort  Nassau,  and  in  the  directorship  of  Netherlands- 
this  he  was  succeeded  by  Jacob  Eelkens,  who  had  been  a  clerk  in  Am 
sterdam,  and  who,  though  wanting  the  adventurous  spirit  of  his  pre 
decessor,  was  an  excellent  commercial  agent.  As  the  three  years  of 
the  company's  monopoly  went  on,  he  sent  constantly  increasing  stores 
of  furs  down  the  great  river  to  Manhattan  ;  his  scouts  made  long  ex- 


362  DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS  TO  NORTH  AMERICA.     [CHAP.  XIII. 

peditions  into  the  vast  forests  to  the  westward,  to  barter  with  new 
tribes,  and  find  new  kinds  of  skins ;  and  unknown  regions  were 
roughly  mapped  out  for  the  guidance  of  future  traders. 

In  one  of  these  expeditions,  a  party  of  three  scouts,  who  had  pene 
trated  farther  into  the  interior  than  any  before  them,  seem 
prisoners  by  to  have  reached  the  upper  waters  of  the  Delaware,  and  to 
have   descended  the  stream  to  the  mouth  of  the  Schuylkill. 
Here  they  were  seized  by  the  Indian  tribes  of  that  neighborhood,  and 
held  as  prisoners,  though  without  suffering  any  harm  at  the  hands  of 


Upper  Waters  of  the   Delaware. 

their  captors.  Their  situation  gave  rise,  in  turn,  to  new  explorations, 
which  it  would  have  seemed  natural  to  undertake  long  before,  but 
which  had  been  neglected.  For  when  the  traders  at  Manhattan  heard 
of  the  detention  of  three  of  their  fellows,  and  studied  out  the  probable 
position  of  those  who  had  taken  them,  they  at  once  despatched  Cor- 
nelis  Hendricksen  in  the  yacht  Restless  along  the  coast  to  the  south 
ward,  that  he  might  go  up  the  rivers  from  the  great  bay  into  which 
they  were  supposed  to  flow,  and  ransom  the  prisoners. 

Hendricksen  thoroughly  explored  the  shores  of  Delaware  Bay  and 

river,  and  brought  back,  besides  the  three  scouts,  the  most 
piore  Deia-  glowing  acounts  of  the  river  banks  covered  with  grape-vines 

and  abounding  in  game  ;  and  of  the  trade  for  seal-skins, 
which  he  had  opened  with  the  natives.  His  explorations  completed 
the  survey  of  the  whole  coast  that  nominally  belonged  to  New  Neth- 


1618.] 


EXPIRATION   OF   THE  FIRST    CHARTER. 


363 


erland  ;  for  he  had  been  as  far  south  as  the  cape  he  named  Hinlopen, 
or  Inloopen,  either  after  a  worthy  Amsterdam  merchant,  or,  as  some 
contend,  because  it  seemed  to  vanish  as  the  ship  drew  near.  The 
Amsterdam  directors  even  founded,  upon  the  discovery  of  these  new 
"havens,  lands,  and  places,"  a  claim  for  a  new  special  charter;  but 
the  States  General  feared  to  encroach  upon  the  boundaries  of  Vir 
ginia,  and  refused  the  petition,  though  Hendricksen  had  been  sent 
home  to  aid  it  by  plans  and  arguments. 

In  the  early  summer  of  1617,  Jacob  Eelkens  removed  the  Com 
pany's  trading-post  from  Castle  Island,  where  it  was  exposed  to  disas 
trous  freshets  every  spring,  to  the  west  bank  of  the  river  at  the  mouth  of 
the  little  stream  called  Tawasentha  by  the  natives ;  and  here,  a  little 
later,  he  concluded  the  first  formal  treaty  of  friendship  with 

ITT  T^          i        •  i  i  i  •  Expiration 

the  Indians.     But  besides  these  two  events,  nothing   note-  of  the  erst 

New  Nether- 

worthy  marked  the  last  year  and  a  half  of  the  prosperous  land  charter. 
New  Netherland  monopoly  ;  on  the  first  of  January,  1618, 
its  charter  expired  by  its  own  limitation,  and  all  petitions  for  a  re 
newal  were  refused. 
Those  who  had  held 
privileges  under  it,  still 
continued  for  several 
years  to  enjoy  their  ad 
vantages  almost  with 
out  much  trouble  from 
competition ;  but  be 
fore  the  law  their  ex 
clusive  rights  had 
ended.  A  more  pow 
erful  company  than 
they  had  ever  proposed 
was  soon  to  succeed  to 
all  their  privileges,  and  to  add  to  them  the  functions  of  the  founders 
and  virtual  rulers  of  a  new  state,  where  the  Amsterdam  merchants 
had  only  sought  the  immediate  profits  of  a  trade. 

The  greatness  of  the  new  country's  resources  had  made  itself  felt  in 
Holland  ;  and  the  need  of  some  more  comprehensive  and  direct  action, 
such  as  other  nations  were  taking  in  regard  to  their  American  terri 
tories,  was  now  appreciated.  In  the  characteristic  spirit  of  the  Neth 
erlands,  this  action  took  a  commercial  direction  almost  as  a  matter  of 
course.  The  requests  of  small  bodies  of  merchants  were  refused,  it  is 
true  ;  the  owners  of  a  new  ship  (which,  under  May's  command,  had 
gone  as  far  south  as  Chesapeake  Bay),  fared  as  ill,  when  they  peti 
tioned  for  a  charter,  as  the  Netherland  Company  had  before  them. 


Trading  Scouts. 


364  DUTCH   EXPEDITIONS   TO   NORTH  AMERICA.     [CHAP.  XIII. 

But  it  was  on  commercial  grounds,  nevertheless,  that  the  American 
possessions  were  to  be  dealt  with  ;  and  whatever  power  and  riches 
they  were  to  bring  to  the  state  were  to  come  by  the  hands  of  a  great 
trading  corporation. 

In  1621,  the  year  in  which  the  twelve  years'  truce  with  Spain  ex- 
west  India  pii'ed,  the  great  West  India  Company,  so  often  suggested  be- 
corporated1.11"  f°re9  an{l  so  long  debated  and  postponed,  was  chartered  by 
the  States  General  of  the  Netherlands,  with  powers  scarcely 
less  than  those  of  its  fellow  monopoly  in  the  East.  Its  patent,  with 
that  assumption  of  authority  which  belonged  to  the  great  monopolies 
of  the  time,  forbade  any  and  all  inhabitants  of  the  United  Netherlands, 
for  twenty-two  years  after  the  first  of  July,  1621,  to  sail  to  the  coasts 
of  Africa  between  the  tropic  of  Cancer  and  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope, 
or  to  those  of  America  between  the  banks  of  Newfoundland  and  the 
Straits  of  Magellan  except  in  the  service  of  the  West  India  Company. 
In  the  Dutch  territory  in  America  its  power  was  practically  absolute. 
It  could  make  treaties,  appoint  governing  officers  from  the  highest  to 
the  lowest ;  build  and  garrison  forts  ;  administer  justice;  exercise,  in 
fact,  all  the  functions  of  a  government,  and  was  only  responsible  to 
the  States  General  for  its  acts  as  shown  through  its  own  reports.  Its 
central  board  of  nineteen  delegates,  drawn  from  its  five  chambers  of 
directors  in  Amsterdam,  Middleburg,  Dordrecht,  North  Holland, 
Friesland  and  Groningen,  together  with  a  representative  of  the  States 
General,  sat  at  their  council-board  at  home,  and  ruled  a  territory  im 
measurably  greater  than  their  little  state  built  upon  the  marshes  ; 
a  small  army  of  officials  and  a  considerable  merchant  fleet  carried 
out  their  orders  ;  thirty-two  vessels  of  war  and  eighteen  armed  yachts 
were  at  their  service  in  case  they  needed  defence.1 

It  was  to  the  Amsterdam  chamber  of   this   powerful  corporation, 

that  the  affairs  of  all  the  region  of  New  Netherland  were  given  in 

charge  ;    and,  by  the    authority  of    their    patent,  the  West 

The  Com-  &     '  J  J  .       r  ' 

pany  takes     India  Company  formally  "  took  possession      of  the  country 

possession  of  •  £     -IPOO          Tn,  £  J     ' 

its  domains,  in  the  spring  of  Io2z.  ine  enterprise  01  private  traders 
had  not  been  discontinued  in  the  mean  time ;  for  the  fur 
trade  had  been  so  vigorously  prosecuted  along  the  coasts  to  the  south 
and  east  of  Manhattan,  and  even  in  the  bays  near  which  the  new 
English  colony  of  Plymouth  had  been  founded,  that  Sir  Dudley 
Carleton,  King  James's  Ambassador  at  The  Hague,  had  entered  a  pro 
test  against  the  encroachment.  But  this  remonstrance  went  through 
a  process  which  would  now  be  called  "  stifled  in  committee  "  ;  for  it 

1  Sixteen  war  vessels  and  four  yachts  provided  by  the  States  General  under  the  terms  of 
the  charter  ;  sixteen  vessels,  and  fourteen  yachts  by  themselves.  For  the  charter  in  full  see 
O'Callaghan,  vol.  i.,  Appendix  A. 


1623.]  THE   WALLOONS.  365 

was  referred  first  to  one  branch  of  the  Netherland  government  and 
then  to  another,  each  professing  ignorance  of  any  actual  Dutch  estab 
lishment  in  America,  until  at  last  the  subject  was  fairly  forgotten. 
At  all  events,  it  was  not  permitted  to  interfere  with  the  West  India 
Company's  plans ;  these  went  steadily  on,  and  now  took  such  shape  as 
for  the  first  time  promised  the  new  territory  a  permanent  population, 
and  began  to  change  it  from  being  the  resort  of  transient  traders  to 
the  site  of  settled  and  lasting  colonies. 

In  the  spring  of  1623,  when  the  Company  had  at  last  completed  all 
their  arrangements,  closed  their  subscription  books,  and  fully  organ 
ized  their  official  staff,  that  clause  of  their  charter  which  prescribed 
that  "  they  must  advance  the  peopling  of  those  fruitful  and  unsettled 
parts,"  received  its  first  practical  attention.  Early  in  March  the  ship 
New  Netherland  sailed  from  Holland,  and  carried  as  her  Emigra. 
passengers,  not  only  many  of  the  company's  officers  and  ser-  waliooi^6 
vants,  but  also  the  first  colonists,  in  the  true  meaning  of  the  1623- 
word,  who  were  to  make  their  homes  in  the  new  country,  and  be 
the  earliest  tillers  of  its  soil.  Like  the  first  settlers  of  New  England, 
these  "  Walloons  "  had  been  driven  from  their  homes  by  religious 
persecution,  but  it  had  been  of  a  fiercer  and  more  relentless  kind 
than  any  that  the  English  Puritans  had  been  made  to  feel.  Their 
name,  in  which  the  root  of  the  old  Dutch  "  Waalsche  "  and  the 
German  "  Welschen "  appears,  indicated  their  French  origin  ;  but 
they  had  lived  for  generations  in  those  southern  Netherland  prov 
inces  which  had  not  joined  the  great  revolt  against  Spain,  and  whose 
population  was  chiefly  Roman  Catholic.  In  Hainault  and  Luxem 
bourg,  Namur  and  Limburg,  they  had  formed  a  class  sharply  distinct 
from  the  mass  of  the  people.  Speaking  French  that  was  even  then 
quaint  and  old  in  its  forms,  and  professing  the  reformed  religion,  they 
were  a  marked  race,  out  of  place  among  the  Flemish  subjects  of 
Philip  ;  and  the  savage  persecution  of  the  Spaniards  had  been  ex 
ercised  against  them  with  a  force  that  was  driving  great  numbers  of 
them  into  the  freer  Netherlands.  Here  they  generally  settled,  seek 
ing,  by  industry  and  their  remarkable  skill  as  mechanics,  to  replace 
the  property  they  had  lost ;  but  many  of  them  longed  for  a  country 
they  could  call  their  own,  and  the  sense  of  permanence  and  security 
which  that  alone  could  give. 

It  was  a  company  of  these  thrifty  people  who  now  ventured  to  the 
New  World.  They  had  already  applied  through  Sir  Dudley  Carle- 
ton  to  King  James  and  the  Virginia  Company  for  permission  to  emi 
grate  to  Virginia  ;  but  only  unsatisfactory  conditions  were  offered 
them.  The  West  India  directors,  hearing  of  their  application, 
wisely  seized  upon  the  opportunity,  and  made  them  tempting  offers, 


366 


DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS   TO  NORTH  AMERICA.     [CHAP.  XIII. 


They  settle 


which,  they  accepted.  Thus  they  sailed  on  the  New  Netherlands  under 
^e  command  of  the  Company's  first  regularly  appointed 
director,  the  old  Captain  Cornells  Jacobsen  May  ;  and,  the 
Albany.  g^jp  passing  Up  the  Mauritius  or  North  river  as  far  as  where 
the  fort  had  been  on  Castle  Island,  they  were  landed  there  on  the 

west  bank,  and  set 
to  work  with  all  the 
industry  of  men  whose 
welfare  depended  on 
their  own  hands. 
When  the  yacht 
Mackarel)  which  had 
been  sent  out  the  year 
before  to  take  posses 
sion,  returned  to  Hol 
land,  she  reported  that 
the  colonists'  corn  was 
"  nearly  as  high  as  a 
man  "  ;  and  around  the 
large  and  strong  "Fort  Orange,"  which  they  had  thrown  up  on  their 
first  arrival,  a  village  of  huts  of  bark  was  already  clustered,  where  the 
sturdy  Walloon  families  were  living,  and  already  carrying  on  a  brisk 
traffic  with  the  Indians,  whom  they  described  as  "  quiet  as  lambs."  l 

Not  all  the  Walloons,  however,  and  by  no  means  all  of  the  New 
Netherlands  passengers,  established  themselves  at  Fort  Orange. 
About  eighteen  families  settled  there  ;  but  several  others  had,  on  the 
way,  been  sent  from  Manhattan  to  the  South  (Delaware)  River,  and 
still  others  to  the  mouth  of  the  Connecticut  or  Fresh  River,  and  to  the 
western  end  of  Long  Island  at  Waal-bogt,  or  Walloon's  Bay  —  now 
known  by  the  English  corruption,  Wallabout.  Eight  men, 


First   Settlement  at  Albany. 


.Manhattan     too,  were  left  at   Manhattan   Island,  to  form  a  trading  es- 

On   the  South 


Island. 


tablishment  for  the  Company.  On  the  South  River,  the 
settlers  built  a  fort,  which  was  finished  a  year  after  their  arrival ;  and 
from  its  site,  northward  and  eastward,  all  along  the  coast  to  Narragan- 
sett  Bay,  the  Dutch  now  traded  peacefully,  their  settlements  growing 
in  prosperity  and  their  traffic  in  profits  ;  so  that  Adriaen  Joris,  who 
had  come  out  as  second  in  command  of  the  -New  Netherlands  was  able  to 
report,  when  he  returned  home  in  December,  1624,  that  everything 
was  going  on  favorably  wherever  the  colonists  had  founded  their 
homes. 

i  D.  D.  Barnard  (Address  before  Albany  Institute,  1839),  says  the  site  of  the  settlement 
is  now  occupied  by  the  business  part  of  Albany.  At  the  time  of  the  address  the  "  Fort 
Orange  Hotel,"  an  old  mansion-house,  afterward  destroyed  by  fire  in  1847,  stood  on  the 
ground  once  occupied  by  the  fort.  Compare  Brodhead,  vol.  i.,  p.  152,  note. 


1626.]  THE  COLONY  AT  MANHATTAN.  367 

Three  governors  in  turn  administered  the  affairs  of  the   growing 
colony  during  this  early  period  of  quiet  prosperity  :  May,  as  has  been 
said,  during   1624  ;   William   Verhult  in  1625  ;   and  Peter 
Minuit  after  the  fourth  of  May,  1626.     But  it  was  only  with  nors  of  New 

Netherland. 

the  arrival  or  the  last  that  the  different  settlements  were 
properly  united  under  a  single  government.  It  was  Minuit  who  first 
made  Manhattan  politically  what  in  spite  of  neglect  it  had  long  been 
naturally,  the  chief  place  of  New  Netherland.  Acquiring  a  firmer 
title  than  that  of  discovery,  by  buying  the  whole  island  from  the  In 
dians  for  "  the  value  of  sixty  guilders,"  1  he  established  himself  there 
with  his  "Schout"  or  high  sheriff,  his  "  Opper  Koopman"  or  secretary 
and  commissary,  and  his  council  of  five  members,  and  began  to  rule  with 
a  wisely  directed  energy. 

His  plans  with  regard  to  Manhattan  were  soon  aided,  though  at  the 
temporary  cost  of  the  other  settlement  at  Fort  Orange,  by  an  act  of 
the  greatest  folly  on  the  part  of  Krieckebeeck,  a  commissioner  who 
now  commanded  at  the  latter  place,  Eelkens  having  long  before  been 
superseded  for  misconduct  toward  the  Indians,  and  Barentsen,  his  suc 
cessor  in  the  fur  trade,  only  acting  as  second  in  actual  control  of  the 
fort.  Krieckebeeck  allowed  himself  to  be  persuaded  by  the  Mohican 
Indians  to  act  as  their  allies  against  the  Mohawks  ;  and  going  out  with 
them  upon  the  war-path,  was  killed,  with  several  of  his  people,  in  a 
sudden  attack  made  by  the  enemy.  Any  farther  bad  results  of  his 
action  were,  it  is  true,  prevented  by  his  deputy,  Barentsen,  who  was  a 
favorite  with  the  Indians  everywhere  ;  but  nevertheless  Min 
uit  thought  it  best  to  withdraw  the  colonists  from  Fort  the  colony  to 
Orange  to  Manhattan,  leaving  only  a  small  garrison.  About 
the  same  time,  the  settlers  on  the  South  River  left  it  and  joined  the 
main  colony ;  so  that  from  this  time  all  the  chief  interests  of  New 
Netherland  were  permanently  centred  in  that  spot. 

In  material  improvements  the  island  had  for  several  years  little  to 
boast  of.     Rude  dwellings  of  wood  and  bark,  clustered  along  the  bank 
of  the  North  River  near  the  southern  extremity  of  the  land,  furnished 
temporary  homes  for  the  colonists.     A  thatched  stone  build 
ing,  more  lasting  and  pretentious,  formed  the  Company's  bus-  Fort  Am-° 
iness  quarters ;  while  on  the  point  itself  a  large   quadrang 
ular  stone  fort,  Fort  Amsterdam,  was  begun,  within  whose  shelter 
permanent  houses  were  to  be  built  later. 

But  these  beginnings,  though  rude,  were  vigorously  pushed  forward 
by  the  busy  settlers ;  while  from  the  headquarters  thus  at  last  estab 
lished  where  nature  seemed  to  have  made  a  perfect  site,  the  West 
India  Company's  yachts  carried  their  rich  cargoes  back  to  Holland,  or 
1  About  twenty-four  dollars,  gold. 


368 


DUTCH  EXPEDITIONS  TO   NORTH  AMERICA.     [CHAP.  XIII. 


followed  their  fast  increasing  trade  along  the  coast  to  the  south,  or  to 
the  east  as  far  as  Buzzard's  Bay.     A  friendly  letter  was 

Increase  of  .  "  " 

New  Nether-   written  to  the  English  colony  at  .Plymouth  :  and  the  New 

land  trade.  J  .  J  .        , .     , 

Netherland  government  made  its  nrst  essay  in  diplomacy  in 
sending  its  secretary  as  a  formal  ambassador  to  the  Puritan  Governor 
Bradford,  with  whom  he  exchanged  congratulations,  though  the  New 
Englander  stood  somewhat  stiffly  upon  his  rights  under  the  patent  of 
King  James,  and  argued,  though  courteously,  that  the  Dutch  had 
no  right  to  the  land  which  they  occupied.  Later,  the  matter  even 
threatened  to  take  the  form  of  a  more  serious  dispute  ;  but  the  powers 
at  home  were  still  too  closely  allied  to  have  their  colonies  at  war,  and 
instead  of  conflict,  trade  was  promoted  between  Manhattan  and  Plym- 


Earliest  Picture  of  New  Amsterdam. 


outh,  whereby  the  latter  obtained  "linen  and  stuffs"  and  excellent 
wampum,  which  was  used  again  in  buying  from  the  Indians. 

In  1628  the  Island  of  Manhattan  had  a  population  of  two  hundred 
Manhattan  an(^  seventy  colonists.  The  profits  of  the  West  India  Com 
pany's  fur  trade  had  more  than  doubled  since  the  establish 
ment  of  the  settlement ;  but  the  agriculture  of  the  new  region  was 
not  yet  far  enough  advanced  to  support  the  people  unaided,  and  sup 
plies  were  still  sent  out  from  Holland  by  every  vessel.  Mills  were 
built,  and  there  were  manufactories  of  brick  and  lime,  so  that  the 
completion  of  Fort  Amsterdam,  with  its  stone  facing,  was  greatly 
hastened,  and  better  houses  began  to  appear  about  it ;  but  the  great 
trouble  in  the  way  of  the  colony's  further  advance  seemed  to  be  a 
lack  of  organized  labor.  'Private  effort  had  done  its  utmost  when 
it  provided  shelter  and  food  enough  to  eke  out  the  stores  the  Com 
pany  furnished  ;  and  for  a  little  time  there  seemed  danger  that  the 


1628.]  A  CRISIS  IN  THE  AFFAIRS   OF  THE  COLONY.  369 

New  Netherland  experiment  would  come  to  an  end  for  want  of  a  class 
with  large  interests,  apart  from  trade,  in  the  soil  itself,  and  the  sys 
tematized  and  disciplined  labor  that  such  a  class  would  be  sure  to 
foster.  Though  not  a  violent  or  sudden  one,  it  was  nevertheless  in 
some  sense  a  crisis  in  the  colony's  affairs  ;  and  it  was  met  by  the 
vigilant  directors  with  a  measure  of  relief  which  was  perhaps  illiberal 
and  certainly  short-sighted,  but  which  at  first  appeared  to  attain  its 
end,  while  it  was  far  from  inconsistent  with  the  spirit  of  the  time  in 
which  it  was  adopted. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


THE  FATHERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND. 

THE  PURITANS  UNDER  JAMES  I.  —  SOCIAL  CONDITION  OF  THE  ENGLISH  AT  THE  BEGIN 
NING  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.  —  THE  SEPARATISTS  OF  NORTH  NOTTINGHAM 
SHIRE. —  BREWSTER  AND  THE  EPISCOPAL  RESIDENCE  AT  SCROOBY. —  PERSECUTION 
OF  THE  PURITANS.  —  THEIR  ATTEMPTS  TO  ESCAPE  FROM  ENGLAND.  —  LONG  EXILE 
IN  HOLLAND.  —  MOTIVES  FOR  A  PROPOSED  REMOVAL  TO  AMERICA.  —  PETITION  TO 
KING  JAMES.  —  NEGOTIATIONS  WITH  THE  DUTCH.  —  EMBARKATION  OF  THE  PILGRIMS 
AT  DELFT-HAVEN.  —  FINAL  DEPARTURE  OF  THE  "MAY  FLOWER"  FROM  ENGLAND. 
—  ARRIVAL  AT  CAPE  COD.  —  FORM  OF  GOVERNMENT  ADOPTED.  —  EXPLORATIONS 

ALONG  THE  COAST.  —  SlTE  FOR  A  COLONY  SELECTED. CONFUSION  OF  FACTS  AND 

DATES  AS  TO  THE  LANDING  AT  PLYMOUTH. — THE  FIRST  WINTER.  —  SUFFERINGS 
AND  DEATHS. 


The  lessons 
of  exile. 


THE  moral,  political,   and,  in  some   sense,  tne  material  training 
which  the  colonists  on  the  James  River,  in  Virginia,  were 
twelve    years  in   acquiring,  as   a  necessary  preparation  for 
future  success,  the  Pilgrims  were,  during  the  same  period,  subjected  to 

in  Holland.  "  We  are  well  weaned," 
said  the  pastor,  Robinson,  after  nine 
years  of  exile,  "  from  the  delicate 
milk  of  our  mother  countrie,  and 
enured  to  the  difficulties  of  a  strange 
and  hard  land."  Poverty  in  Am 
sterdam  and  Leyden  was  not,  in 
deed,  quite  so  irremediable  as  in  the 
American  wilderness,  but  the  lesson 
it  taught  did  not  greatly  differ  in 
either  place.  As  exiles  in  strange 
lands  with  no  dependence  but  upon 
First  seat  of  Plymouth  Colony.  themselves,  the  necessity  of  self-de 

nial  and  self-reliance  for  the  sake  of  self-preservation  would  grow  alike 
in  both  places ;  in  the  circumstances  of  both  was  the  same  stimulus  to 
the  most  active  use  of  all  the  powers  of  mind  and  body ;  isolation, 
whether  from  absolute  solitude,  or  from  being  surrounded  by  an  alien 
people,  would  produce  the  same  sense  of  mutual  interest,  of  the  neces 
sity  of  mutual  help,  and  of  a  mutual  regard  for  each  other's  rights, 
which  is  the  only  sure  foundation  for  political  self-government. 


1603.]  THE   PURITANS   UNDER  JAMES   I.  371 

While,  however,  this  preparatory  education  of  events  was  thus,  in 
some  measure,  the  same  for  the  founders  of  the  first  two  English 
colonies  on  the  American  coast,  the  Pilgrims  had  this  great  advan 
tage  over  their  countrymen  in  Virginia,  —  that  a  bond  of  unity  in 
deep-seated  religious  convictions  was  strengthened  by  a  brotherhood 
of  social  relations  growing  out  of  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  their 
flight  from  their  native  land. 

The  accession  of  James  I.  to  the  throne  of  England  did  not  bring, 
as  they  hoped  it  would,  relief  to  those  devout  and  devoted  believers, 
who,  through  the  preceding  reign,  had  contended  for  religious  free 
dom.  From  the  time  of  Mary,  "  the  one  side  laboured,"  says  Brad 
ford,  "to  have  the  right  worship  of  God  and  discipline  of  Christ 
established  in  the  Church,  according  to  the  simplicitie  of  the  Gospell, 
without  the  admixture  of  men's  inventions,  and  to  have,  and  to  be 
ruled  by,  the  laws  of  God's  word  dispensed  in  those  offices,  and  by 
those  officers  of  Pastors,  Teachers,  and  Elders,  etc.,  accord 
ing  to  the  Scripturs.  The  other  partie,  though  under  many  between  the 
colours  and  pretences,  endevored  to  have  the  episcopall  dig.  theusePara- 
nitie  (after  the  popish  maner)  with  their  large  power  and 
jurisdiction  still  retained ;  with  all  those  courts,  cannons,  and  cere 
monies,  together  with  all  such  livings,  revenues,  and  subordinate 
officers,  with  other  such  means  as  formerly  upheld  their  antichristian 
greatnes,  and  enabled  them  with  lordly  and  tyranous  power  to  perse 
cute  the  poore  servants  of  God."  1  In  this  succinct  statement  is  the 
very  pith  of  the  matter  in  that  religious  controversy  which  followed 
the  Reformation  ;  and  one  of  its  important  results,  hardly  noticed, 
and  almost  unknown  at  the  time,  was,  that  it  banished,  early  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  a  ship-load  of  yeomen  from  England. 

At  a  conference  held  in  1603,  to  consider  the  grievances  of  this 
class  of  his  subjects,  James  I.  boasted,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  in  Scot 
land,  that  he  had  "  kept  such  a  revel  with  the  Puritans  these  two 
days,  as  was  never  heard  the  like ;  where  I  have  peppered  them  so 
soundly  as  ye  have  done  the  Papists."  2  There  was  nothing  to  be 
hoped  from  this  son  of  a  mother  who  had  been  led  to  the  block  for 
her  adherence  to  the  ancient  faith,  as  well  as  for  her  crimes  against 
the  state.  It  was  equally  amusing  to  James  to  "  pepper "  Puritans 
in  public  debate,  and  to  remember  that  Catholics  had  lost  their  heads 
for  their  devotion  to  the  religion  in  which  they  believed. 

There  were  many  of   these  persecuted  dissenters  throughout  the 

1  History  of  Plymouth  Plantation,  by  William  Bradford,  the  Second  Governor  of  The 
Colony. 

2  Strype's  Life  of  Whitgift,  App.  No.  46.     Quoted  in  Palfrey's  History  of  New  England, 
vol.  ii.,  p.  130. 


372 


THE   FATHERS   OF   NEW  ENGLAND.          [CHAP.  XIV. 


Kingdom,  sometimes  gathered  into  societies  of  their  own,  especially 
in  London ;  sometimes  bearing  alone  a  silent  but  painful  testimony 
against  the  undoubted  immoralities  connived  at  in  the  church,  and  the 
vain  ordinances  —  as  they  deemed  them  —  which  they  were  called 
upon  to  share  in  and  to  sanction.  But  in  no  rural  district  were  they 
so  numerous  or  so  well  organized  as  in  that  part  of  England  where 
the  borders  of  Nottinghamshire,  Lincolnshire,  and  Yorkshire  met. 
More  than  one  earnest  preacher  in  that  neighborhood  had  called  and 
held  together  by  his  eloquence  and  zeal  a  little  knot  of  followers  as 
firm  in  the  faith  as  he,  and  ready  to  follow  whithersoever  his  higher 
light  should  lead. 


View  of  Scrooby  Village. 

In  North  Nottinghamshire,  in  the  Hundred  of  Basset-Lawe,  is 
The  village  tne  village  of  Scrooby.  Though  little  more  than  a  hamlet, 
i*n  Nottfngy-'  it  was  of  some  importance  three  hundred  years  ago,  as  a 
hamshire.  post-town  on  the  great  road  from  London  to  Scotland,  and 
as  containing  a  manor  place  belonging  to  the  Archbishop  of  York, 
then  the  Archbishop  Sandys,  one  of  whose  sons  was  that  Edwin  San 
dys  who,  in  1618,  was  made  Treasurer  of  the  Virginia  Company  in 
London.  There  were  historical  associations  connected  with  the  arch 
bishop's  residence  at  Scrooby  other  than  those  for  which  fhe  descend 
ants  of  the  "  Pilgrim  Fathers  "  may  cherish  its  memory,  and  which 
even  now  are  not  without  some  interest.  Here  Margaret,  Queen  of 
Scotland,  daughter  of 'Henry  VII.,  slept  for  a  night,  on  the  way  to 
her  own  kingdom,  in  1503  ;  here,  also,  Henry  VIII.  passed  a  night 
on  a  northern  progress  in  1541  ;  and  in  this  manor-house  Cardinal 
Wolsey  lived  some  weeks  after  his  fail,  ministering  to  the  poor  in 


1600.]        THE   ENGLISH  IN   THE    SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY.        373 

deeds  of  charity,  saying  mass  on  Sundays,  and  distributing  alms  in 
meat,  and  drink,  and  money.1 

This  house  of  the  archbishop  was  the  one  great  house  of  Scrooby, 
for  the  people  of  the  neighborhood  were,  for  the  most  part,  plain  yeo 
men,  who  followed  what  Bradford,  the  Plymouth  Governor,  called 
the  innocent  trade  of  husbandry.  In  the  method  and  manners  of 
their  lives  there  was  no  very  essential  difference,  except  that  they 
had  enough  to  eat  and  wear,  from  that  way  of  life  which  fell  to  the 
lot  .of  some  of  them  in  an  American  wilderness. 

For  the  habits  of  the  common  people  of  England  at  that  period 
were  exceedingly  simple,  and  in  some  respects  almost  prim-  Socialcoil. 
itive.     Only  where  wood  was  plentiful  were  their  houses  Eng°Hshf 
well  and  solidly  built  of  timber;  elsewhere  they  were  mere  pe™pTe°of 
frames  filled  in  with  clay.     The  walls  of  the  rich  only,"  who  that  period- 
could  afford  such  a  luxury,  were  covered  with  hangings  to  keep  out 
the  dampness,  and  even  plastered  walls  were  uncommon.     The  floors 
of  these  houses  were  of  clay,  and  cov 
ered,   if    covered   at   all,    with   rushes. 
Chimneys  had   come   into    use   in   the 
sixteenth  century,  though  it  was  com 
mon  long  after  to  have  a  hole  in  the 
roof  for  the  escape  of  smoke,  as  is  done 
in  Indian  wigwams.     The  windows  were 
not  glazed,   for   that  was   a  luxury  so 
costly  that  even  noblemen  when  they 
left  their  country-houses  to  go  to  Court, 
had   their  glass-windows  packed  away  Fire-place  in  I6th  Century' 

with  other  precious  furniture  for  safe-keeping.  In  the  houses  of 
the  common  people  there  was  no  better  protection  from  the  weather 
than  panes  of  oiled  paper.2  A  pallet  of  straw,  with  a  rough  mat  for 
covering,  and  a  log  for  a  pillow,  was  deemed  a  good  bed.  The  food 
of  the  people  was  chiefly  flesh,  for  gardening  was  an  art  confined  to 
the  very  rich,  for  ornamental  purposes,  and  few  vegetables  were  cul 
tivated.  Even  agriculture  was  in  a  rude  state  ;  the  draining  of  land 
was  almost  unknown,  and  fever  and  ague  consequently  the  common 
disease.  A  clumsy  wooden  plough,  a  wooden  fork,  a  spade,  hoe, 
and  flail  were  the  only  agricultural  implements.  The  bread  was  the 
coarser  kind  of  black  bread  made  of  the  unbolted  flour  of  oats,  bar 
ley,  or  rye,  and  in  times  of  scarcity  this  was  mixed  with  ground 

1  See  The  Founders  of  New  Plymouth,  by  Rev.  Joseph  Hunter.  London,  1854.  Also 
Bradford's  History  of  Plymouth  Plantation. 

2  Winslow  wrote  home  from  Plymouth,  in  the  early  days  of  the  colony,  to  those  about  to 
emigrate  :  "  Bring  paper  and  linseed  oil  for  your  windows." 


THE   FATHERS   OF  NEW  ENGLAND.          [CHAP.  XIV. 


Thecongre- 

gationat 


acorns.  Table-forks  were  unknown ;  the  spoons  and  platters,  where 
there  were  any,  were  of  wood ;  with  the  use  of  a  knife,  the  fingers, 
and  a  common  dish,  the  civilities  of  the  table  were  generally  dis 
pensed  with. 

The  yeomen,  who  lived  in  this  rude  fashion,  were  not  called  Sir  or 
The  English  Master,  as  gentlemen  and  knights  were,  but  plain  John  or 
yeoman.  Thomas.  Yet  they  were  the  "  settled  or  staid  men  "  — 
from  the  Saxon  Zeoman  —  the  great  middle  class  of  England, 
the  firm  foundation  on  which  the  state  rested  ;  and  in  "  foughten 
fields  "  the  king  remained  among  his  yeomanry,  or  footmen,  for  on 
them  he  relied  as  his  chief  strength.  The  land  they  lived  upon  and 
cultivated  was  sometimes  their  own,  and  they  often  acquired  wealth. 
Their  sons  were  sent  to  the  universities  and  the  inns  of  court,  and 
from  the  ranks  of  the  yeomen  great  men  and  great  names  were  given 
to  England ;  to  the  class  of  gentry  came  recruits  of  fresh,  healthy 
blood,  quickened  by  new  ambitions,  strong  in  great  purposes.  It  was 
good  stock  from  which  to  settle  a  new  country. 

There  was  at  Scrooby  a  congregation  of  Separatists,  made  up,  for 
the  most  part,  of  people  of  this  class  ;  educated  and  enlight 
ened  enough  to  come  to  conclusions  of  their  own  upon  ques 
tions  of  religious  reformation  ;  so  stable  in  character  as  to 
hold  firmly  to  convictions  conscientiously  formed ;  and  endowed  with 
enough  of  this  world's  goods  to  maintain  their  freedom  of  thought, 

even  to  banish 
ment,  if  need  be, 
from  their  native 
land.  A  body  of 
their  faith  pre 
ceded  them  by 
some  years,  in  em 
igrating  to  Hol 
land,  and,  after 
their  departure, 
the  Scrooby  peo 
ple  had  no  separ 
ate  building  in 
which  to  congre 
gate  for  religious 

Site  of   Scrooby  Manor.  WOl'Ship.  Their 

usual      place      of 

meeting  was  the  manor-house,  belonging  to  the  Archbishop  of  York. 
The  leading  man  among  them  was  William   Brewster,  who   after- 


1587.]  BREWSTER'S   EARLY   LIFE.  375 

wards  became  the  ruling  elder  of  the  little  church.1  Brewster  held 
the  office  of  postmaster  —  or  post  as  it  was  then  called  —  of  Scrooby, 
a  position  of  a  good  deal  of  importance,  as  it  enjoined  not  only  the 
charge  of  the  mails  and  the  dispatch  of  letters,  but  the  entertainment 
and  conveyance  of  travellers,  in  whatever  direction  they  wished  to  go. 
The  postmaster  was,  in  one  sense,  an  innkeeper ;  but  an  innkeeper  for 
certain  duties,  by  official  appointment.2  As  the  incumbent  of  such 
an  office,  Brewster  occupied  the  largest  and  most  important  house  in 
Scrooby,  —  that  belonging  to  the  archbishop.  And  this,  notwithstand 
ing  his  official  relation  to  the  state,  and  its  dignity  as  an  episcopal 
residence,  he  threw  open,  once  a  week,  to  those  with  whose  opposition 
to  the  state  and  church  he  was  in  fullest  sympathy. 

But  Brewster  was  otherwise  a  man  of  some  mark.  In  his  youth  he 
had  spent  some  time  at  the  University  of  Cambridge,  where  william 
he  had  acquired  a  knowledge  of  Latin  and  Greek.  He  Brewster- 
afterward  went  to  court,  and  entered  the  service  of  a  noted  statesman 
of  the  time,  William  Davison  ;  was  with 
him  when  he  was  sent  ambassador  from 
Elizabeth  to  the  Low  Countries  to  perfect 
a  league  with  the  United  Provinces  that  signature  of  wiiiiam  Brewster. 
should  enable  them  to  maintain  their  independence  of  Spain  ;  was 
still  the  faithful  friend  and  follower  of  his  master  when  Davison  was 
ruined  for  having  issued,  as  Secretary  of  State,  —  possibly  against  the 
orders,  but  certainly  in  accordance  with  the  wishes  of  Elizabeth,  —  the 
royal  writ  for  the  execution  of  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots.  Davison's  fall 
ended  Brewster's  career  as  a  courtier ;  but  he  still  possessed  influence 
enough  to  secure  the  appointment  of  post  at  Scrooby.  Davison  was 
a  Puritan.  Bradford  says  of  him  that  he  was  a  "  religious  and  godly 
gentleman,"  and  that  he  esteemed  Brewster  "  rather  as  a  son  than  a 
servant,  and  for  his  wisdom  and  godliness  in  private,  he  would  con 
verse  with  him  more  like  a  familiar  than  a  master."3  Such  influence 
must  have  confirmed,  if  it  did  not  instill,  in  Brewster's  mind  the  prin 
ciples  which  governed  his  subsequent  life. 

A  society  of  Separatists,  holding  weekly  meetings  under  such  cir 
cumstances,  in  the  house  occupied  by  an  officer  of  the  government, 
and  belonging  to  a  dignitary  of  the  established  Church,  would  be 
quite  likely  to  attract  more  than  usual  attention  ;  their  boldness  may 

1  The  oflice  of  the  ruling  elder  in  the  early  Puritan  churches  was  to  assist  the  teaching 
elder,  or  pastor,  in  overseeing  and  ruling  the  church,  and  to  teach  occasionally  in  the  ab 
sence  of  the  pastor.     See  Young's  Chronicles  of  the  Pilgrims,  p.  455,  note,  for  authorities 
on  this  point. 

2  See  Hunter's  Founders  of  New  Plymouth,  where  the  social  and  official  position  of  Elder 
Brewster,  at  Scrooby,  was  first  made  clear. 

3  Bradford's  Memoir  of  Elder  William  Breicster,  in  Young's  Chronicles  of  the  Pilgrims. 


376  THE   FATHERS    OF   NEW  ENGLAND.         [CHAP.  XIV. 

have  even  been  construed  into  a  defiance  of  the  law.  These  people 
had  already  been  called  upon  to  suffer  afflictions,  when  some  of  them 
were  members  of  the  church  at  Gainsborough  under  the  care  of  John 
Smith,  who,  with  many  of  his  people,  had  taken  refuge  in  Holland 
some  years  before  ;  and  also,  no  doubt,  when  upholding  Richard  Clif 
ton,  a  clergyman  at  Babworth  in  the  County  of  Nottingham, 

Persecution  T  i  <•  c  •  -n  i 

oftheSepa-  who  had  been  deposed  tor  non-coniorimty.  But  those  were 
as  "  flea-bitings,"  it  was  said,1  to  the  sufferings  they  were 
called  upon  to  undergo  soon  after  they  had  gathered  into  a  distinct 
body  at  Scrooby.  They  were  hunted  and  persecuted  on  every  side ; 
some  were  imprisoned ;  the  houses  of  others  were  beset  and  watched 
till  they  were  fain  to  fly,  leaving  homes  and  means  of  livelihood,  to 
preserve  their  liberty. 

Brewster  soon  ceased  to  be  postmaster,  —  no  doubt  dismissed  from 
the  office  he  had  held  more  than  a  dozen  years.  And  he  was  to  have 
been  otherwise  punished.  He  and  two  others  of  the  principal  mem 
bers  of  the  society,  Richard  Jackson  and  Robert  Rochester,  were  sum 
moned  as  Separatists  before  the  Ecclesiastical  Commission  for  the 
province  of  York  to  pay  a  fine  of  <£20  each  ;  and  for  not  obeying  that 
summons,  a  further  fine  of  an  equal  amount  was  subsequently  recorded 
against  them,  —  recorded,  but  not  paid,  for  the  recusants  had  fled  be 
fore  the  commissioners  had  time  to  enforce  the  penalties.2 

From  the  persecutions  which  these  people  suffered  there  was  no 
escape  but  by  exile,  and  they  resolved,  therefore,  to  go  to  the  Low 
Countries,  where  they  understood  there  was  freedom  of  religion  for 
all  men.  Though  we  learn  only  in  general  terms  the  character  of  the 
pains  and  penalties  which  they  were  called  upon  to  endure,  these  were 
certainly  of  no  light  nature,  —  if  persecution  for  religion's  sake  is  ever 
light,  —  for  they  clearly  understood  the  difficulties  that  beset  the  path 
on  which  they  were  about  to  enter,  and  which  they  chose  as  the  least 
painful  alternative.  "  Their  desires  were  sett  on  the  ways  of  God  and 
to  injoy  his  ordinances,"  and  for  these  they  were  ready  to  leave  their 
native  soil,  their  lands  and  livings,  their  friends  and  familiar  acquaint 
ance,  to  go  to  a  country  of  which  they  knew  nothing  except  by  hear 
say,  to  learn  a  new  language,  to  get  their  livings  they  knew  not  how. 
Nor  was  this  all.  They  could  not  stay ;  neither  were  they  permitted 
to  go,  without  hindrance,  for  the  ports  were  shut  against  them.  They 
were  oftentimes  betrayed,  their  goods  taken  from  them  to  their  great 
trouble  and  expense,  and  their  intentions  defeated.3 

It  was  impossible  that  two  or  three  hundred  people  could  dispose  in 

1  Bradford's  History  of  Plymouth  Plantation. 

2  Hunter's  Founders  of  New  Plymouth. 
8  Bradford. 


1606.] 


ATTEMPTS   TO   LEAVE   ENGLAND. 


377 


secret  of  lands  and  houses  and  other  property,  make  the  other  needful 
preparations  to  emigrate  in  a  body  from  a  rural  neighborhood,  and  do 
all  this  unobserved.  They  hoped  to  get  away  in  small  detachments, 
but  even  this  was  impossible,  without  encountering  dangers  Cruel  treat_ 
and  oftentimes  defeat.  At  one  time,  at  Boston,  in  Lincoln-  ^Lfncoi'n- 
shire,  a  large  party  of  them  got  safely  at  night  on  board  8hire" 
ship.  But  the  master  was  treacherous,  and  handed  them  over  to  the 
officers  with  whom  he  was  in  complicity ;  their  goods  were  rifled  and 
ransacked ;  the  men  were  searched  to  their  shirts  for  money ;  even  the 
women  were  compelled  to  submit  to  like  indignities  "  further  than  be 
came  modesty ; "  and  thus  outraged,  insulted,  and  robbed,  they  were 
led  back  to  the  town,  a  spectacle  and  wonder  to  the  gaping  crowd  that 
flocked  from  all  sides  to  see  and  jeer  at  their  sad  condition.  The  mag- 


Attempted  Flight  of  Puritans. 

istrates  were  kinder  than  the  people,  and  showed  them  such  favor  as 
they  could ;  but  the  whole  company  were  imprisoned  for  a  month, 
when  they  were  dismissed  to  go  where  they  would,  excepting  seven 
of  the  chief  among  them,  who  were  detained  for  trial. 

These,  and  others  with  them,  made  a  more  disastrous  attempt  to 
escape  some  months  later.  A  Dutch  ship  was  engaged  to  take  them 
on  board  at  a  lonely  place  between  Hull  and  Grimsby,  and  thither 


378  THE   FATHERS   OF   NEW  ENGLAND.          [CHAP.  XIV. 

the  women  and  children  were  sent  in  a  small  vessel ;  the  men  were 
to  go  by  land.  All  arrived  in  due  season.  The  ship  rode  at  an- 
Attempted  c^or  some  distance  from  the  shore  ;  the  smaller  vessel,  with 
Huiffrus-  tne  women  and  children,  lay  aground  where  the  ebb-tide 
trated.  ^ad  jeff.  faer^  j^  single  boat-load  of  men  had  been  taken  off 
to  the  ship  as  the  first  preparation  for  departure,  when  suddenly  a 
mob  of  country  people,  some  on  foot  and  some  mounted,  armed  with 
bills  and  guns  and  other  weapons,  rushed  down  upon  the  beach.  The 
frightened  Dutchman  "  swore  his  country's  oath,  Sacramente"  weighed 
anchor,  hoisted  sails,  and  with  a  fair  wind  was  soon  out  at  sea.  His 
wretched  passengers,  though  destitute  of  everything  but  the  clothes 
they  wore,  gave  no  thought  to  their  own  condition  as  they  looked 
back  to  their  helpless  wives  and  children  thus  abandoned  to  dangers 
which  they  could  neither  defend  them  from  nor  share.  On  shore, 
some  of  the  men  evaded  the  mob  of  assailants  and  dispersed ;  others, 
who  remained  with  their  own  families,  or  to  give  such  little  protection 
as  they  could  to  the  families  of  their  friends  carried  away  by  the 
Dutchman,  were  taken  into  custody,  with  those  who,  either  from  age, 
or  youth,  or  sex,  were  unable  to  escape.  The  unhappy  company  was 
at  the  mercy  of  the  mob,  always  more  cruel  than  the  law.  They  were 
hurried  from  place  to  place,  from  one  magistrate  to  another  ;  denied 
even  the  friendly  shelter  of  a  jail ;  for  the  women  and  children,  as 
they  mostly  were,  had  been  guilty  of,  at  worst,  a  venial  crime  in  seek 
ing  to  go  with  their  husbands  and  fathers  even  to  a  foreign  land. 
Now  they  had  no  homes  to  which  they  could  be  sent,  for  those  they 
had  recently  left  had  passed  into  other  hands  ;  their  present  means  of 
support  must  needs  have  been,  very  limited  and  soon  exhausted ;  what 
should  be  done  with  them  then  was  a  puzzling  problem  which  each 
bench  of  magistrates  tried  to  throw  upon  its  fellow  of  the  next  town 
or  parish,  and  which  none  of  them  thanked  the  over-zealous  populace 
for  thrusting  upon  them  for  solution. 

So  pitiable  a  case  could  hardly  fail  to  excite  compassion  in  any  civil 
ized  community  of  even  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  and  help 
came  no  doubt,  at  last,  to  these  poor  people,  from  many  persons  as 
liberal  in  mind  as  in  purse.  For  we  learn  from  the  narrative  of  these 
trials  and  misfortunes,1  that  "  by  these  so  public  troubles,  in  so  many 
eminent  places,  their  cause  became  famous,  and  occasioned  many  to 
look  into  the  same  ;  and  their  godly  carriage  and  Christian  behavior 
was  such  as  left  a  deep  impression  upon  the  minds  of  many."  The 
scattered  families  and  friends  at  length  united  in  Holland, 

The  reunion  i         TX         i        i  •  •        -i       i>  IT 

of  Puritans    where  the  Dutch  ship  arrived  alter  a  tempestuous  and  dan 
gerous  voyage.     In  the  course  of  the  winter  of  1607-8,  and 
the  following  spring,  the  Puritan  Church  of  Scrooby  came  together 

1  Bradford's  History  of  Pit/mouth  Plantation. 


1608.]  ARRIVAL  IN   HOLLAND.  379 

again  in  Amsterdam,  its  members  arriving  in  several  parties,  and  at 
different  times,  after  many  perils  and  hardships. 

These  simple  yeomen  of  Nottinghamshire,  whose  travels,  till  that 
winter,  had  seldom,  if  ever,  probably,  extended  beyond  the  nearest 
market  town,  had  come,  as  it  were,  into  a  new  world.  Instead  of  the 
green  fields  and  pleasant  hamlets  of  England,  they  saw  a  city  risen 
out  of  the  sea,  its  long,  sluggish  canals  crowded  with  ships  and  spanned 
by  hundreds  of  bridges.  They  wandered  about  streets  of  a  new  and 
strange  aspect,  filled  with  people  speaking  a  strange  and  uncouth  lan 
guage,  and  clothed  in  strange  costumes.  Accustomed  to  the  monot 
ony  of  simple,  rural  ways  and  the  rigid  economies  of  country  life,  they 
were  brought  suddenly  into  places  where  wealth  and  luxury  abounded, 
and  where  the  sights  and  sounds  of  a  vast  and  busy  commerce  met 
them  on  every  side.  But  there  were  other  realities  before  them  of  a 
sterner  kind  which  gave  them  little  time  to  observe  or  think  of  these 
new  surroundings.  The  grim  face  of  poverty  confronted  them,  and  all 
their  energies  were  needed  in  the  struggle  for  a  bare  subsistence. 

There  were  already  two  English  Puritan  churches  in  Amsterdam. 
Strife  had  arisen  among  the  members,  stirred  up  chiefly  by 
John  Smith,  the  pastor  of  the  church  from  Gainsborough  in  churches  in 
Lincolnshire,  a  man  of  too  restless  and  contentious  a  dispo 
sition  to  remain  long  at  rest  in  any  one  place  or  in  one  belief.  The 
Scrooby  people  had  suffered  enough  to  value  tranquillity  ;  and  indeed 
all  their  history  shows  them  to  have  been  at  all  times  a  people  who, 
next  to  purity,  sought  for  peace.  As  they  had  abandoned  the  homes 
they  loved  so  much,  that  they  might  live  in  the  quiet  enjoyment  of 
their  own  religious  faith,  so  now,  rather  than  be  drawn  into  these 
disputes  and  difficulties  among  the  brethren  of  Amsterdam,  they  re 
moved,  about  a  year  after  their  arrival,  to  Leyden. 

This  city  was,  for  the  next  twelve  years,  their  home,  where  they 
gained  a  sufficient  livelihood  by  hard  labor,  but  especially  Thelifein 
"  enjoying  much  sweet  and  delightful  society  and  spiritual  Holland- 
comfort  together  in  the  ways  of  God,  under  the  able  ministry  and 
prudent  government  of  Mr.  John  Robinson  and  Mr.  William  Brews- 
ter." 1  Brewster,  in  those  years,  turned  his  early  education  to  account 
by  teaching,  and  carried  on  also  the  business  of  printing,  sometimes 
publishing  religious  works  which  were  prohibited  in  England.  Brad 
ford,  who  was  not  more  than  twenty  years  of  age  when  he  left  Not 
tinghamshire,  learned  the  trade  of  silk-weaving,  but  devoted  himself 
also  to  study,  being  particularly  anxious  to  read  God's  Word  in  the 
original  Hebrew,  and  became  a  leading  member  of  the  church.  Other 
principal  men  among  them  were  Carver,  Cushmau,  and  Winslow,  — 

1  Bradford's  History. 


380  THE   FATHERS    OF   NEW   ENGLAND.         [CHAP.  XIV. 

the  latter,  a  young  man  of  higher  social  position  than  any  of  the  rest, 
who,  visiting  Ley  den  while  on  his  travels,  became  acquainted  with  the 
Puritans,  and  embraced  their  faith  about  three  years  before  their  de 
parture  from  this  city  of  refuge. 

As  the  old  grew  older,  and  the  young  attained  to  manhood,  a  serious 
consideration  of  the  future  pressed  upon  them.     Though  none  were 
very  poor,  there  were  none  who  were  very  prosperous  ;  and 
tionwith       their   circumstances  were  not  such  as  to  attract  any  large 
dwelling-       addition  to  their  number,  or  to  increase  their  material  wel 
fare.     They  remained  strangers  in  a  strange  land,  still  cher 
ishing  next  to  religious  purity  their  birthright  as  Englishmen.     Some 
of  the  younger  members,  who  had  little  or  no  recollection  of  their  Eng 
lish  homes,  were  already  yielding  to 
the    influences   and    temptations    of 
foreign  habits  and  manners  ;  and  the 
elders   feared   that   as   they  passed 
away,  not    only  would    the  Church 
be  scattered,  and  the  good  seed  of 
the  Gospel   perish,  but  all  the  ties 
and  associations  of  a  precious  inher 
itance  be  lost  and  forgotten  among 
their  children. 

Whither  should  they  go  that  their 
faith  and  their  birthright  might 
both  be  handed  down  to  their  pos- 

Church  at  Austerfield,  Bradford's  Birthplace.  .  ,  ,      .         .     ,  „        ~. 

tenty  sacred  and  inviolate  I  I  he 

power  of  the  hierarchy  that  had  driven  them  from  their  homes,  hunted 
them  from  port  to  port,  robbed  them  of  almost  everything  but  liberty 
and  the  right  of  obedience  to  the  dictates  of  their  own  consciences,  for 
bade  that  they  should  go  back  to  England.  Where,  then,  should  they 
seek  a  new  resting-place  ? 

There  were  divided  opinions.  The  anxious  discussion  of  the  subject 
began  a  year  or  more  before  Raleigh  returned,  to  lose  his  head,  from 
that  fatal  expedition  to  Guinea  where  he  had  lost  his  son.  El  Dorado 
was  still  believed  in ;  there  were  some  among  the  Puritans  of  Leyden 
bold  enough  and  imaginative  enough  to  urge  a  removal  to  a  land  where 
in  perpetual  summer,  upon  a  soil  that  should  yield  them  the  fruits  of 
the  earth  almost  without  labor,  and  in  the  enjoyment  of  wealth  that, 
from  the  abundance  of  gold,  need  have  no  limit,  they  hoped  to  forget 
the  perils,  the  hardships,  and  the  poverty  of  the  past. 

Some  were  opposed  to  any  change.  They  dreaded  to  expose  their 
women  and  the  aged  to  the  perils  and  privations  of  a  long  voyage,  to  a 
change  of  climate,  and  to  the  dangers  to  be  encountered  from  a  savage 


1617.]  PROPOSED   REMOVAL   TO   AMERICA.  381 

people,  stories  of  whose  ferocity  and  cruelty  "  moved  the  very  bowels 

of  men  to  grate  within   them,  and   made  the   weak   to   quake   and 

tremble."     But  the  more  sober-minded,  putting  aside  both  delusive 

hopes  and  vain  fears,  turned  their  eyes  to  Virginia,  though 

not  to  the  colony  on  Jarnes  River,  where,  it  was  thought,  they   remove* to° 

would  be  subjected  to  religious  persecution  quite  as  much  as 

in  England.     Somewhere,  however,  within  the  wide  domain  of   the 

Virginia  Company  they  proposed  to  establish  themselves  as  a  separate 

and  independent  colony,  trusting  they  might  obtain  from  James  the 

assurance  that  they  should  be  left  in  the  undisturbed  enjoyment  of 

their  religious  convictions. 

They  relied  much  on  the  good  offices  of  Sir  Edwin  Sandys,  then  a 
member  of  the  Council  of  the  Virginia  Company,  and  under  whose 
wise  management  the  colony  on  the  James  was  soon  to  give  its  first 
real  promise  of  permanence  and  prosperity.  Sandys  and  Brewster  had 
served  together  under  William  Davison  thirty  years  before,  and  had 
probably  continued  in  friendly  relations ;  the  former  can  hardly  have 
failed  to  be  familiar  with  the  history  of  the  Scrooby  Puritans  who  had 
met  in  the  house  that  Brewster  leased,  but  which  belonged  to  the 
Sandys  family ; l  he  was  known,  moreover,  to  share,  in  some  degree, 
the  opinions  of  the  Puritans  upon  religious  subjects,  and  to  sympathize 
with  them  in  the  trials  to  which  those  opinions  had  led.  None  knew 
better  than  he  the  peculiar  fitness  of  such  a  community  to  found  a 
colony  —  men  and  women  of  blameless  lives,  of  tenacious  morality,  of 
habits  of  persistent  industry,  inured  to  the  evils  of  poverty,  accustomed 
by  years  of  exile  to  the  shifts  and  devices  with  which  new  settlers  must 
make  themselves  content  and  prosperous  ;  for  it  was  not  with  them  as 
with  other  men,  wrote  Robinson  and  Brewster  to  Sandys,  "  whom 
small  things  can  discourage,  or  small  discontentments  cause  to  wish 
themselves  at  home  again." 

Robert  Cushman  and  John  Carver  were  sent  in  1617  to  England  as 
a  deputation  from  the  Church  to  obtain,  if  possible,  a  patent  Cughman 
from  the  king  which  should  give  them  lands  in  North  Vir-  genuoTng- 
ginia  with  the  assurance  under  the  royal  seal,  of  religious  land" 
liberty.  On  their  part  it  was  promised  that  "  they  would  endeavour 
the  advancement  of  his  majesty's  dominions  and  the  enlargement  of 
the  Gospel  by  all  due  means."  "  It  was,"  James  said,  "  a  good  and 
honest  motion  ;  but  what  profits,"  he  asked,  "  would  come  from  such  a 
movement  ?  "  They  answered  :  "  Fishing."  "  So  God  have  my  soul," 
was  the  king's  reply,  "  'tis  an  honest  trade  :  'twas  the  Apostles'  own 
calling."  2  Nevertheless,  the  negotiations,  which  were  continued  for 

1  See  Founders  of  New  Plymouth  for  an  account  of  the  division  of  the  lands  of  the  See 
among  his  sons  by  Archbishop  Sandys. 

2  Winslow's  Brief  Relation. 


382  THE   FATHERS    OF   NEW  ENGLAND.          [CHAP.  XIV. 

about  a  year  and  seconded  by  men  of  influence,  came  to  nought. 
The  king  was  unwilling  to  recognize  such  a  colony  by  any  public 
act,  and  it  would  have  been  inconsistent  with  his  orders  for  the  gov 
ernment  of  the  South  Virginia  colony,  given  years  before,  when  he 
had  commanded  that  "  the  word  and  service  of  God  should  be  preached 
and  used  according  to  the  rites  and  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  Eng 
land."  i 

James,  however,  was  made  to  understand  that  these  people  who  be 
sought  his  favor  were  not  such  rigid  Separatists  as  their  enemies  repre 
sented  them  to  be,  and  did  not  assume  that  the  Christian  religion  was 
committed  exclusively  to  their  keeping.  For  they  held  communion 
with  the  Reformed  Dutch  and  French  churches,  and  acknowledged 
those  of  Scotland  as  Churches  of  Christ ;  they  assented  to  the  confes 
sion  of  Faith  of  the  English  Church,  and  were  ready  always  to  receive 
into  fellowship  its  devout  members,  though  they  did  not  accept  its 
Liturgy,  its  stated  and  formal  prayers,  and  its  constitution  as  a  national 
church.2  The  King  they  acknowledged  as  supreme  head  of  the  State  ; 
in  him  was  the  lawful  power  to  appoint  bishops,  as  well  as  civil  officers, 
whose  authority,  therefore,  they  honored  as  a  part  of  the  civil  govern 
ment  ;  and  they  denied  all  power  or  authority  in  any  ecclesiastical 
body  that  was  not  derived  from  the  king.3  James  understood  clearly 
enough,  no  doubt,  the  distinction  the  Puritans  always  kept 
with  King  in  mind  between  civil  and  spiritual  conformity.  But  he  also 

James 

understood  that  they  were  a  harmless  and  godly  people  who 
used  their  religious  freedom  for  the  guidance  of  their  own  lives,  and  not 
for  the  government  of  others.  He  gave  their  friends  in  England  the 
assurance  that  he  would  connive  at  their  settlement  in  America,  and 
should  not  molest  them  so  long  as  they  conducted  themselves  peace 
ably  though  he  could  not  extend  to  them  his  royal  permission  and  pub 
lic  recognition.  Some  of  the  Puritans,  understanding  the  character 
of  the  king,  were  disposed  to  think  that  they  had  gained  in  this  con 
cession  all  that  they  could  reasonably  hope  for.  James,  they  said, 
"  had  he  given  them  a  seal  as  broad  as  the  house  floor," 4  would 
have  evaded  or  recalled  it,  if  at  any  future  time  he  should  be  disposed 
to  do  so. 

But  better  warrant  than  the  mere  word  of  the  king  was  wanted  to 

1  Stith's  History  of  Virginia. 

2  There  is  a  gleam  of  humor,  though  he  may  not  have  meant  it  as  such,  in  Robinson's  as 
sertion  that,  "  Our  faith  is  founded  upon  the  writings  of  the  Prophets  and  Apostles  in  which 
no  mention  of  the  Church  of  England  is  made." 

8  Compare  the  Seven  Articles  sent  by  the  Church  at  Leyden  to  the  Council  in  England 
and  signed  by  Robinson  and  Brewster.  New  York  Historical  Collections,  Second  Series,  vol. 
iii.,  Part  I.  Bradford's  History  of  Plymouth  Plantation  ;  Winslow's  Brief  Relation,  in 
Young's  Chronicles. 

4  Bradford's  Plymouth  Plantation. 


1619.]  NEGOTIATIONS  WITH   THE   DUTCH.  383 

justify  them  in  giving  up,  without  any  certainty  for  the  future,  the 
security  and  peace  they  possessed  in  Holland.  Negotiations  were 
continued  in  England,  Brewster  going  over  to  the  assistance  of  Car 
ver  and  Cushman.  After  much  trouble  and  delay,  a  patent  was 
procured  from  the  Virginia  Company,  issued  in  the  name  of  Mr. 
John  Wincob,  on  the  9th  of  June,  1619.1  Of  this  patent  nothing 
further  is  known,  and  it  was  never  used.2  It  is  supposed  to  have 
made  a  grant  of  land  somewhere  near  the  mouth  of  the  Hudson 
River.  Perhaps  the  patent  was  not  thought  sufficient  because  it 
promised  to  give  title  to  lands  in  that  region.  The  Puritans  were 
wary  and  prudent,  and  evidently  the  first  condition,  in  their  minds, 
of  the  proposed  movement  was  that  wherever  they  went  they  should 
carry  with  them  a  sense  of  absolute  security  and  protection.  The 
Dutch  already  had  their  trading  posts  on  Manhattan  Island  and  the 
upper  waters  of  the  Hudson ;  and  though  they  had  as  yet  made  no 
agricultural  settlements,  they  clearly  had  the  best  right  to  that  re 
gion  of  country,  both  by  virtue  of  discovery  and  of  possession.  The 
most  obvious  course,  therefore,  for  the  Puritans  was  to  obtain  from  the 
Dutch  some  confirmation  of  title,  before  they  moved  under  a  patent 
from  an  English  company  to  lands  which  the  Dutch  occu 
pied.  This,  at  any  rate,  is  what  they  attempted  to  do,  what-  propose  to 
ever  may  have  been  the  motive.  The  pastor,  John  Robinson,  New  Nether- 
proposed,  on  behalf  of  the  Church,  to  the  Amsterdam  Com 
pany,  that  he  and  his  people  should  go  to  New  Netherland,  provided 
the  Company  could  assure  them  of  protection,  and  establish  a  colony 
there  subject  to  the  Prince  of  Orange  and  the  States  General.  Four 
hundred  families,  to  go  from  Holland  and  from  England,  Robinson 
said,  would  constitute  the  colony. 

The  proposal  seems  to  have  been  received  with  enthusiasm  by  the 
Amsterdam  merchants,  who  well  knew  the  value  of  such  material  for 
the  settlement  of  a  new  country.  Their  reply  was  an  offer  of  free 
transportation,  cattle  for  every  family,  and  other  inducements  ; 3  but 
on  the  question  of  the  indispensable  guaranty  of  safety,  they  could 
only  refer  the  memorial  to  the  Prince  of  Orange  with  a  prayer  of 
their  own  that  protection  be  granted.  The  stadtholder  re-  Their  propo_ 
ferred  the  subject,  in  his  turn,  to  the  States  General.  After  j^Yh^stetes 
much  deliberation  and  discussion,  the  petition  of  the  Am-  General- 
sterdam  Company,  in  favor  of  Robinson's  proposal,  was  rejected. 
This  decision  may  have  been  influenced  by  the  proposed  establish- 

1  The  date  is  fixed  by  the  journal  of  the  London  Council  in  Neill's  History  of  the  Vir 
ginia  Company,  where  the  name  of  the  patentee  is  spelt  Wencop,  Wincopp,  and  Whincop. 
Bradford  says  Wincob. 

2  Bradford's  Plymouth  Plantation. 

3  Winslow  in  Young's  Chronicles;  Bradford's  History. 


384 


THE   FATHERS    OF   NEW   ENGLAND.         [CHAP.  XIV. 


ment  of  the  great  West  India  Company,  to  which  would  properly 
belong  the  settlement  of  all  Dutch  possessions  in  the  New  World, 
and  by  the  possible  international  complications  that  might  arise  from 
colonizing  a  body  of  Englishmen  under  the  protection  of  the  States- 
General.1 

Nearly  three  years  had  now  elapsed  since  negotiations  were  begun, 
and  none  of  them  had  led  to  any  practical  result.  Many  were  discour 
aged  by  these  difficulties,  and  some  in  England,  who  had  at  first  pro 
posed  to  join  in  the  enterprise,  and  others  in  Holland,  declined  to  have 
anything  more  to  do  with  it.  The  more  zealous  and  persistent,  who 
were  not  to  be  deterred  by  any  obstacles,  were  convinced  that  the  time 
had  come  to  resort  to  positive  measures  and  to  take  risks.  The  reso 


lution  shaped  itself  into  "  a  solemn  meeting  and  day  of  humiliation 
to  seeke  the  Lord  for  his  direction,"  and  the  conclusion  was  that  such 
as  were  disposed  and  could  make  the  needful  preparation  should  go, 
with  Elder  Brewster  at  their  head  ;  the  rest,  and  the  larger  number, 
remaining  with  Mr.  Robinson  in  Leyden.  Those  who  were  left  be 
hind,  it  was  agreed,  should  follow  when  means  and  opportunity  offered. 
Among  those  in  London  who  had  interested  themselves  in  the  nego 
tiations  for  a  patent  was  one  Thomas  Western,  a  merchant.  He  was 
in  Leyden  some  time  in  1620,  while  these  delays  and  doubts  and  dis- 

1  Holland  Documents,  cited  in  Brodhead's  History  of  the  State  of  New  York. 


1620.]  PREPARATIONS   TO   EMIGRATE.  885 

appointments  were  gradually  bringing  a  portion  of  the  Church  to  a 
determination  to  emigrate  at  all  hazards.  Weston's  counsel  was  in 
harmony  with  this  feeling  ;  he  advised  them  to  rely  neither  upon  the 
Dutch  nor  the  Virginia  Company ;  he  and  others,  he  assured  them, 
were  ready  to  supply  ships  and  money  for  such  an  enterprise  ;  and  he 
reminded  them  that  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges  and  others  were  moving 
for  a  new  patent  in  Northern  Virginia.  "  Unto  which,"  adds  Brad 
ford,  "  Mr.  Weston,  and  the  cheefe  of  them,  began  to  incline 
it  was  best  for  them  to  goe."  Thereupon  a  joint-stock  com-  company00 
pany  was  formed,  to  continue  for  seven  years ;  when  all  the 
profits  of  the  adventure  in  trading,  fishing,  planting,  or  anything  else, 
were  to  go  for  that  period  into  a  common  stock,  and  at  the  end  of  it 
were  to  be  equally  divided  between  the  adventurers  and  planters,  — 
that  is,  those  who  had  contributed  money  only  to  the  enterprise,  and 
those  who  had  engaged  in  it  personally.  Every  person  over  sixteen 
years  of  age  who  went  was  rated  at  ten  pounds,  or  a  single  share ;  and 
if  he  provided  his  own  outfit,  to  the  amount  of  ten  pounds,  he  was  en 
titled  to  two  shares.  All  the  members  of  the  colony  were  to  be  sup 
ported  out  of  the  common  stock.  These  were  the  essential  articles  of 
agreement  made  between  the  London  adventurers,  who  were  chiefly  to 
supply  the  means  of  going,  and  the  members  of  the  Leyden  Church 
who  were  to  go.1 

The  conflicting  rights  and  interests  of  adventurers  and  planters  in 
this  joint-stock  company  were  not  adjusted  without  a  good  deal  of 
controversy  and  delay,  the  planters  being  especially  dissatisfied  that 
the  value  of  the  homes  which  they  should  make  for  themselves  in  the 
colony  should,  at  the  end  of  the  seven  years,  be  equally  divided  among 
all  the  stockholders  ;  and  that,  during  that  period,  there  should  not 
be  two  or  three  days  in  each  week  reserved  to  the  colonists  in  which  to 
labor  on  their  own  account.  But,  at  length,  all  the  arrangements  for 
their  departure  were  completed.  The  Speedwell,  a  vessel  of  sixty  tons, 
was  bought  and  fitted  in  Holland,  and  another,  the  Mayflower,  was 
chartered  in  London,  and  was  to  receive  them  at  Southampton. 

On  or  about  the  21st  of  July,  1620,2  the  church  at  Leyden  held  a 
day  of  humiliation  and  prayer,  the  pastor,  Mr.  Robinson,  preaching  a 
sermon  "  upon  which,"   says  Bradford,  "  he  spente  a  good   The  Pil. 
parte  of  the  day  very  profitably,  and  suitable  to  their  pres-  f,e™ts_at 
ente  occasion."     Those  that  were  to  stay  behind  "  feasted  "    Haven- 
those  that  were  to  go,  "  refreshing  "  them  afterward  with  the  singing 
of  psalms,  making  joyful  melody,  for  many  were  expert  in  music.3 

1  Bradford's  Plymouth  Plantation,  p.  45,  where  the  articles  of  agreement  are  given. 

2  Prince's  Chronological  History  of  New  England. 

3  Winslow  in  Young's  Chronicles. 


386 


THE  FATHERS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND.    [CHAP.  XIV. 


The  next  day  —  leaving  "  the  goodly  and  pleasante  citie,"  continues 
Bradford,  "  which  had  been  their  resting-place  near  twelve  years  ;  but 
they  knew  they  were  pilgrims  and  looked  not  much  on  those  things, 
but  lift  up  their  eyes  to  the  heavens,  their  dearest  cuntrie,  and  quieted 
their  spirits  "  —  they  went  to  the  port  of  Delft-Haven. 

Here  the  night  was  spent,  not  in  sleep,  but  in  friendly  entertain 
ment,  and  Christian  discourse.  On  the  morrow  they  parted  with 
their  friends,  and  "  truly  dolfull,"  he  adds,  "  was  the  sight  of  that 
sade  and  mournf  ull  parting ;  to  see  what  sighs  and  sobbs,  and  praires 
did  sound  amongst  them,  what  tears  did  gush  from  every  eye,  and 

pithy  speeches  pierst  each  harte But  the  tide  (which  waits 

^^  for    no    man)     calling 

them  away,  that  were 
thus  loath  to  departe, 
their  Reverend  pastor, 
falling  downe  on  his 
knees,  (and  they  all 
with  him,)  with  watrie 
cheekes  comended  them 
with  most  fervente 
praiers  to  the  Lord 
and  his  blessing.  And 
then  with  mutuall  im- 
braces,  and  many  tears 
they  tooke  their  leaves  one  of  an  other  which  proved  to  be  the  last 
leave  of  many  of  them."1  Then  they  went  forth  to  help  lay,  in  the 
wilderness  across  the  sea,  the  foundations  of  a  Nation. 

On  the  5th  of  August,  the  two  ships  sailed  from  Southampton  with 
about  one  hundred  and  twenty  passengers.  In  a  week  they  were 
back  again,  putting  in  at  Dartmouth,  the  Speedwell  having 
sprung  a  leak.  In  a  few  days  they  again  put  to  sea,  but  only 
to  run  back  to  Plymouth,  after  sailing  a  hundred  leagues, 
for  the  Speedwell  proved  altogether  unseaworthy.  A  month 
was  thus  wasted  in  attempts  to  get  away,  and  it  was  not  till 
the  6th  of  September  that  the  Mayfloiver  succeeded  in  mak 
ing  a  successful  departure  alone,  carrying,  beside  her  crew,  one  hun 
dred  and  two  persons  for  the  new  colony.2 

It  was  sixty-five  days  before  they  saw  land  again.     The  voyage 

1  In  bidding  farewell  to  their  friends,  "  we  gave  them,"  says  Winslow,  "a  volley  of 
small  shot  and  three  pieces  of  ordnance  ;  and  so  lifting   up  our  hands  to  each  other,  and 
our  hearts  for  each  other  to  the  Lord  our  God,  we  departed." 

2  This  was  the  exact  number  that  sailed  from  Plymouth,  and  arrived  at  Cape  Cod,  there 
having  been  one  birth  and  one  death  on  the  passage. 


The  depar 
ture  of  the 
Mayfloiver, 
6th  of  Sep 
tember, 
1620,  Old 
Style,  16th 
September, 
New  Stvle. 


1620.] 


THE  VOYAGE   OF   THE   MAYFLOWER. 


387 


was  tempestuous ;  the  ship  was  too  weak  to  bear  much  canvas  ;  and 
it  was  a  question,  when  they  were  half  across  the  ocean,  whether  they 
should  not  return.  On  the  9th  of  November,  they  hailed  with  delight, 
as  so  many  storm-tossed  mariners  had  done  before  them,  the  low  coast 
of  Cape  Cod.  Their  purpose  was  to  find  a  place  farther  south,  or  in 
definitely  somewhere  about  the  mouth  of  the  Hudson  River,  for  their 
proposed  settlement,  and  for  half  a  day,  after  making  land,  they  stood 


Plymouth   Harbor,   England. 

to  the  southward.  But  they  fell  presently  among  dangerous  shoals. 
Gosnold's  Point  Care  and  Tucker's  Terror,  Champlain's  Cape  Male- 
barre,  stretched  out  into  the  sea  and  turned  them  back.  The 
next  day  they  ran  along  the  outer  coast  of  the  cape,  sailed 
round  its  extremity,  and  on  the  llth  1  cast  anchor  in  Cape  Cod 
Harbor,  now  the  Harbor  of  Provincetown,  the  only  windward  port 
within  two  hundred  miles  where  the  ship  could  have  lain  at  anchor 
for  the  next  month,  unvexed  by  the  storms  which  usher  in  a  New 
England  winter. 

Their  first  act  on  landing,  was  to  fall  upon  their  knees  and  bless  God 
"  who  had  brought  them  over  the  vast  and  furious  ocean,  and  delivered 
them  from  all  the  perils  and  miseries  thereof,  againe  to  set 
their  feete  on  the  firme  and  stable   earth,  their  proper  ele-   landing, 

r      r  llth  Novem- 

mente."  2     But  however  much  cause  there  was  for  thankful-  ber,  1620, 

O    S     21st 

ness,  they  were  not  unmindful  of  the  serious  difficulties  with   November, 
which  they  stood  face  to  face.    Among  them  were  some  per 
sons  not  of  the  Leyden  Church,  but  who  had  been  taken  on  board, 
perhaps,  in  England,  as  servants  of  the  leading  and  wealthier  members 

1  The  llth  of  November,  Old  Style  ;  the  21st  of  November,  New  Style. 

2  Bradford. 


388 


THE   FATHERS   OF   NEW  ENGLAND.         [CHAP.  XIV. 


of  the  Company.  These  men  had  given,  the  day  before  the  harbor 
was  reached,  and  when  the  ship  had  been  turned  back  from  her  south 
ward  course,  some  evidences  of  a  discontented  and  mutinous  spirit. 
If  the  patent  from  the  Southern  Virginia  Company  was  not  used,  and 
a  settlement  was  made  without  the  jurisdiction  of  that  Company,  then 
these  malcontents  intimated  they  would  be  under  no  restraint  of  legal 

authority,  and  at  liberty  to  do  as  should  seem  to  them  best. 

It  was  determined,  therefore,  to  enter  into  a  compact  of  gov- 
Mayjiower.  ernment  which  should  not  only  have  the  binding  force  of  law 
over  all  persons  disposed  to  be  insubordinate,  but  which  would  be,  it 
was  thought,  of  as  much  virtue  under  the  circumstances  in  which 
they  were  placed  as  any  patent.  On  the  day  they  entered  Cape  Cod 


Compact 
signed  on 
board  the 


Harbor  of  Provincetown. 

harbor,  therefore,  all  the  men,  excepting  seven  of  the  servants,  entered 
into  and  signed  this  agreement : l  — 

"  In  ye  name  of  God,  Amen.  We  whose  names  are  underwriten, 
the  loyall  subjects  of  our  dread  soveraigne  Lord,  King  James,  by 
ye  grace  of  God,  of  Great  Britairie,  Franc  &  Ireland  king,  defender 
of  ye  faith,  &c.,  haveing  undertaken,  for  ye  glorie  of  God,  and  ad- 
vancemente  of  ye  Christian  faith,  and  honour  of  our  king  &  countrie, 
a  voyage  to  plant  ye  first  colonie  in  ye  Northerns  part  of  Virginia,  doe 
by  these  presents  solemnly  &  mutualy  in  ye  presence  of  God,  and  one  of 
another,  covenant  &  combine  our  selves  togeather  into  a  civill  body 
politick,  for  our  better  ordering  &  preservation  &  furtherance  of  ye  ends 
aforesaid  ;  and  by  vertue  hearof  to  enacte,  constitute,  and  frame  such 
just  &  equall  lawes,  ordinances,  acts,  constitutions  &  offices,  from  time 

1  We  follow  literally  the  copy  in  Bradford's  History  of  Plymouth  Plantation,  recovered 
in  full  only  twenty  years  ago,  and  published  under  the  editorship  of  Charles  Deane.  This 
document  is  given  in  Mourt's  Relation,  and  Morton's  Memorial,  with  some  slight  and  un 
important  changes  of  phraseology. 


1620.]  A   CONSTITUTION   OF   GOVERNMENT.  389 

to  time,  as  shall  be  thought  most  meete  &  convenient  for  ye  generall 
good  of  ye  Colonie,  unto  which  we  promise  all  due  submission  and 
obedience.  In  witnes  wherof  we  have  hereunder  subscribed  our 
names  at  Cap-Codd  ye  11  of  November,  in  y*  year  of  ye  raigne  of  our 
soveraigne  lord,  King  James,  of  England,  France  &  Ireland  ye  eight 
eenth,  and  of  Scotland  ye  fiftie  fourth  An0  :  Dom.  1620." 

The  promptitude  and  unanimity  —  saving  only  of  the  seven  servants, 
who  were  the  only  members  of  the  company  it  was  necessary  to  reduce 
to  obedience  by  creating  a  government  —  with  which  this  compact  was 
made  and  adopted,  almost  compel  the  belief  that  the  colonists  were 
quite  content  to  find  themselves  without  the  jurisdiction  of  either 
the  Dutch,  or  the  Virginia  Company.  The  shoals  of  Point  Care  and 
Tucker's  Terror  may  have  been  rather  a  pretext  than  a  cause  for 
making  no  farther  attempt  to  reach  a  port  more  to  the  southward. 
Nor  does  there  seem  to  be  any  sufficient  reason  for  believing  the  story, 
that  the  captain  of  the  Mayflower  was  bribed  not  to  take  his  passen 
gers  to  the  mouth  of  the  Hudson  River.1  The  negotiations  before 
they  left  Holland,  show  that  while  the  States  General  declined  to 
grant  them  protection,  apparently  for  political  reasons,  the  New 
Netherland  Company  were  anxious  to  induce  them  to  settle  in  the 
region  of  country  they  claimed  as  theirs.  It  was  the  Puritans  who 
objected  to  going  without  this  guaranty  of  safety  ;  not  the  Dutch  who 
objected  to  receiving  them.  Weston,  who  represented  the  London  ad 
venturers  on  whom  the  church  members  at  Leyden  were  to  depend  so 
largely  for  the  means  of  removal,  urged  them,  as  we  have  already 
stated,  not  to  rely  upon  either  the  Dutch  or  the  Virginia  Company, 
enforcing  his  counsel  with  the  fact  that  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges,  and 
others,  had  obtained  from  the  king  a  patent  for  that  part  of  America 
called  New  England.  The  Virginia  Company  opposed  this  patent ; 
the  questions  raised  in  regard  to  it  were  carried  to  the  House  of  Com 
mons,  and  it  was  not  till  the  next  year  that  they  were  definitively  dis 
posed  of.  It  may  have  been  for  this  that  the  Puritans  did  not  seek, 
before  their  departure,  for  a  patent  from  the  New  England  Company ; 
but  they  sent  for  and  obtained  it,  when  the  Mayflower  returned  to 
England  in  the  spring.2  It  is  quite  possible  that  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 

1  Morton  in  his  New  England's  Memorial,  published  in  1669,  says  :  "  Of  this  Plot  be 
twixt  the  Dutch  and  Mr.  Jones,  (the  master  of  the  Mayflower,}  I  have  had  late  and  certain 
Intelligence."    He  does  not  'say  what  or  whence  the  intelligence  was,  and  it  is  more  likely 
the  story  was  born  of  the  feeling  that  grew  up  against  the  Dutch  in  later  years,  than  that 
it  had  any  real  foundation.     There  is  no  hint  of  any  dissatisfaction  with,  or  suspicion  of 
Captain  Jones  in  the  narratives  of*  the  emigrants  themselves.     It  has  been  said,  also,  that 
the  Mayflower  had  run  north  of  her  intended  course,  because  the  compass  was  influenced 
by  an  axe,  concealed  purposely,  or  by  chance,  near  the  binnacle.     One  tale  is  hardly  more 
improbable  than  the  other. 

2  This  was  the  patent  to  John  Peirce.     See  the  "  Brief  Narration  "  of  Sir  Ferdinando 


390 


THE   FATHERS   OF    NEW  ENGLAND.         [CHAP.  XIV. 


were  content  to  make  their  land-fall  within  the  boundaries  of  New 
England  rather  than  within  those  of  the  Virginia  Company.  The 
impatience  of  the  captain  of  the  Mayflower  to  land  his  passengers 
and  return  to  England  may  have  found  a  ready  response  in  men  who 
were  not  sorry  that  chance  had  thrown  them  where  they  had  nothing 
to  fear  from  the  interference  of  others,  whatever  other  trials  there 
might  be  in  store  for  them. 

The  extremity  of  Cape  Cod  now  is  quite  a  different  place  from  that 
on  which  the  passengers  of  the  Mayflower  landed,  glad  to  get  ashore 


The  Landing  on  Cape  Cod. 

anywhere  after  their  long  and  anxious  voyage.  Where  they  found 
pleasant  woods  of  oak  and  pine,  of  ash  and  walnut,  and  other  fine 
trees,  "  open  &  without  underwood,  fit  either  to  goe  or  ride  in,"1  are 
now  only  a  few  starved  and  scattered  shrubs.  The  soil  of  "  ex 
cellent  black  earth,  a  spit's  depth,"  has  disappeared,  except  here  and 
there  in  swamps,  and  in  its  place  are  the  shifting  hills  of  yellow  sand, 
drifting  from  year  to  year  like  snow  before  a  driving  storm,  the  Cape 
only  saved  from  being  blown  away  altogether,  by  the  long  beach- 


Gorges,  in  Maine  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  vol.  ii.     Davis's  notes  to  Morton's  Memorial. 
Chronicles.     Deane's  notes  to  Bradford's  History. 
1  Mourt's  Relation.     Bradford  gives  essentially  the  same  account. 


Young's 


1620.]  THE    COAST   EXPLORED.  391 

grass  which  ties  it  down.1  But  then,  as  now,  the  waters  of  the  bay 
were  shallow,  and  the  people  waded  ashore  ;  the  men  to  explore  the 
country,  the  women  to  wash  the  clothes  after  the  long  sea  voyage ; 
though  where  fresh  water  was  found  for  this  purpose,  can  only  now 
be  guessed  by  the  curious  antiquary,  who  finds  traces  of  a  pond,  ob 
literated  long  ago  by  the  encroaching  waters  of  the  sea  and  the  ever 

o       o  «/ 

shifting  sands.2  But  there  was  110  water  fit  for  drinking ;  for,  some 
days  later,  the  men  drank  their  "first  New  England  water"  from 
springs  found  ten  miles  distant  from  the  beach  where  the  Mayflower 
lay  at  anchor. 

A  company  of  sixteen  men  under  Captain  Miles  Standish,  made  this 
first  reconnoissance  of  the  land,  marching  through  boughs  Reconnoi_ 
and  bushes  which  tore  their  armor  in  pieces  ;  seeing  Indians,  ^deAiiLs 
for  the  first  time,  at  a  distance ;  crossing  fields  of   stubble   standish- 
where  they  had  grown  their  maize ;  finding  the  winter's  store  of  the 
grain  itself    which  the  natives  had 
buried  in  the  sand,  and  filling  with 
this  a  kettle  —  left  by  some  former 
visitors,  or  taken  perhaps,  from  some 
wrecked  vessel  —  they  returned  to 
the  ship  like  the  men  from  Eshcol, 

with  the  fruits  of  the  land,  at  which  their  brethren  were  "  marvelusly 
glad  &  their  harts  encouraged." 

When  the  shallop,  which  the  ship  had  brought,  had  received  the 
repairs  she  needed,  more  extended  explorations  were  made  along  the 
shores  of  the  bay.  These  unfortunate  people  could  not  have  come  at 
a  worse  season,  and  could  hardly  have  found  a  less  fitting  place  along 
the  whole  coast,  on  which  to  plant  a  colony.  More  than  a  month  was 
consumed  in  the  search  for  a  spot,  which  they  could  venture  to  believe 
might  answer,  —  a  longer  time  than  it  would  have  taken  to  go  hun 
dreds  of  miles  farther  south,  had  they  wished,  or  had  they  been  will 
ing  to  put  themselves  within  the  jurisdiction  of  either  the  Virginia 
Company  or  the  Dutch.  There  was  nothing  to  invite,  and  every 
thing  to  discourage  them  in  the  aspect  and  condition  of  the  country. 
They  were  very  thankful  to  have  found  corn  enough  in  the  Indian 
stores  to  answer  their  own  needs  in  the  coming  spring  for  seed-corn, 
which  they  honestly  paid  for,  when,  six  months  later,  they  met  with 
the  owners;  and  they  had  good  reason  to  congratulate  themselves, 
that  the  natives  of  the  country  seemed  to  be  but  few  ;  these  were  the 
only  special  blessings,  but  they  were  duly  grateful.  The  weather  was 

1  So  serious  is  the  danger  of  the  destruction  of  the  end  of  Cape  Cod,  as  to  call  for  re 
medial  measures  on  the  part  of  the  United  States  Government,  within  a  few  years. 

2  See  Thoreau's  Cape  Cod,  and  Dexter's  notes  to  Mourt's  Relation. 


392  THE   FATHERS   OF   NEW  ENGLAND.         [CHAP.  XIV. 

so  cold  that  the  sea-spray,  as  it  fell  upon  those  exposed  in  the  open 
shallop,  encased  them,  as  it  were,  in  ai'mor  of  ice;  the  ground  was 
frozen  hard,  and  during  much  of  the  first  month  covered  with  snow ; 
they  rather  hoped  than  knew  that  fish,  which  was  to  be  their  chief 
dependence,  were  plentiful,  for  at  that  season  they  could  catch  but 
few  ;  and  they  sought  painfully  along  the  shallow  shores  for  a  harbor 
with  water  enough  to  float  their  ship,  whose  passengers  pined  to  ex 
change  their  narrow  cabins  for  even  the  lonely  wilderness  and  the 
leafless  woods,  through  which  the  winter  storms  swept  dismally,  bring 
ing  with  them  the  roar,  the  smell,  and  the  dreariness  of  the  sea. 

The  ship  herself  was  safe  on  good  anchorage-ground,  and  in  a  land 
locked  port ;  but  for  her  people  to  remain  longer  than  was  absolutely 
necessaiy,  at  a  place  where  there  was  no  fresh  water  to  drink,  and 
where  the  shore  could  only  be  reached  by  wading,  except  at  the 
full  flood  of  the  tide,  was  out  of  the  question.  No  pretermission  of 
diligence,  therefore,  in  seeking  for  a  better  spot  was  permitted,  and  at 
last  the  search  was  successful.  On  Wednesday,  the  6th  of  December 
(Old  Style),  a  party  put  off  for  a  more  extended  search  than  had  yet 
been  made.  Robert  Coppin,  the  gunner  of  the  Mayflower,  was  of  this 
company,  and  he  knew,  he  said  —  for  he  had  been  upon  this  coast  be 
fore  —  of  a  good  harbor,  and  a  great  navigable  river  in  the  other  head 
land  of  the  bay.  On  Wednesday  and  Thursday  they  cruised  along 
the  shore,  on  the  west  side  of  the  cape,  from  Provincetown  to  Truro, 
from  Truro  to  Wellfleet,  from  Wellfleet  to  Eastham  —  as  the  region  is 
now  divided.  A  sudden  attack  was  made  upon  them,  on  Friday  morn 
ing,  by  the  natives,  as  they  were  getting  ready  to  leave  the  night's 
camping-ground,  and  arquebus-shot  and  arrow  flights  were  exchanged 
without  harm  to  either  party. 

From  this  point  they  sailed  along  the  coast  for  fifteen  leagues,  on 
Friday,  and,  seeing  no  good  harbor,  stood  on  in  search  of  that  which 
Coppin  said  he  knew.  The  day  was  stormy  ;  in  the  course  of  it  the 
rudder  of  the  boat  was  unshipped,  and,  before  they  made  land  on  the 
other  side  of  the  bay,  she  carried  away  her  mast,  split  her  sail,  and 
was  near  being  lost  altogether.  At  nightfall  they  reached  and  landed 
upon  an  island,  since  known  as  Clark's  Island,  because  Clark,  the 
Mayflower's  chief  mate,  was  the  first  to  step  ashore.  The  next  day, 
the  9th,  they  explored  the  island,  and  on  Sunday,  the  10th,  they 
rested,  as  men  would  be  sure  to  rest  who,  on  week-days,  never  forgot, 
under  any  circumstances,  to  ask  in  outspoken  prayer  the  blessing  of 
God  upon  their  labors. 

On  Monday,  December  llth,1  they  crossed  the  harbor,  sounding  it 

1  December  11,  Old  Style  :  December  21,  New  Style.  In  1769  the  "landing  of  the  'Pil 
grim  Fathers  '  "  was  first  commemorated  at  Plymouth,  and  the  date  in  New  Style  was  errone- 


1620.]  DISCOVERY   OF   PLYMOUTH.  393 

as  they  went,  and  finding  it  of  good  depth  for  small  vessels.     Along 
the  shore  of  the  mainland  they  found  several  brooks  of  plen-   The  explor. 
tiful  waters  pouring  into  the  bay,  and  here  and  there  were  J^on'the 
cleared  fields,  where  the  Indians  had  planted  maize,  ready  December 
for  the  use  of  new  comers.     If  not  the  best  of  places,  it  was,  Je^er'h"6" 
says  Bradford,  who  was  of  the  party,  "  at  least  the  best  they  N- s- 
could  find,  and  the  season  and  their  present  necessity  made  them  glad 
to  accept  it." 

The  incident  in  itself  is  commonplace  enough.  Seventeen  rough 
men,1  who,  for  the  five  previous  days  had  been  in  an  open  boat,  sleep 
ing  by  night  upon  the  bare  ground,  sometimes  drenched  with  rain, 
sometimes  half  frozen  with  the  cold,  landed,  as  they  had  often  done 
before,  from  their  boat  to  seek  anew  a  spot  that  would  answer  their 
purpose.  History,  nevertheless,  has  marked  the  act  as  an  epoch.  Nor 
is  its  significance  likely  to  be  forgotten,  although  confusion  and  mis 
understanding  have  gathered  about  it  and  obscured  its  exact  details. 
Its  importance  and  interest  are  none  the  less  because  it  happens  to 
be  commemorated  by  the  descendants  of  the  Pilgrims,  wherever  they 
are  found,  on  the  anniversary  of  a  day  when  the  event  did  not  occur, 
and  with  the  general  supposition  that  on  that  day  the  people  of  the 
Mayflower  landed  from  the  ship  upon  the  rock  of  Plymouth  —  which 
they  certainly  did  not  do  till  a  fortnight  later. 

Nor  is  there  any  reason,  except  in  the  confounding  of  fact  and  tra 
dition,  for  the  supposition  that  this  boat-load  of  explorers  visited  the 
spot  where  the  Pilgrims  afterward  made  their  home.  That  is  three 
miles  from  Clark's  Island,  while  the  shore  of  the  mainland  —  toward 
which  these  men  would  naturally  steer  their  boat  at  the  nearest  point 
—  stretches  along  opposite  the  island  within  a  much  shorter  distance. 
Though  they  "marched  into  the  land,  and  found  divers  corn-fields 

ously  made  the  22d,  instead  of  the  21st.  The  error,  which  has  been  perpetuated  ever  since 
in  the  celebration  of  the  day,  arose,  it  has  been  supposed,  from  the  addition  of  eleven  days, 
instead  of  ten,  to  mark  the  difference  between  Old  Style  and  New.  The  explanation  is 
unsatisfactory,  as  such  a  blunder  seems  hardly  likely  to  have  occurred.  The  error  more 
probably  came  from  a  mistake  in  punctuation,  in  Motirt's  Relation,  where  the  statement 
is  :  "  And  here  we  made  our  rendezvous  all  that  day,  being  Saturday,  10  of  December 
on  the  Sabbath  day  we  rested,  and  on  Monday  we  sounded  the  harbor,"  etc.  There 
should  be  a  period  after  "  Saturday,"  when  it  would  read :  "  And  here  we  made  our 
rendezvous  all  that  day,  being  Saturday.  10  of  December,  on  the  Sabbath  day,  we  rested  ; 
and  on  Monday,"  etc.  Saturday  was  certainly  the  9th,  not  the  10th;  but  when,  in  1769, 
in  Plymouth,  they  turned  to  Mourt's  Relation,  to  fix  the  date  of  this  incident,  and  read  the 
record  with  its  erroneous  punctuation,  they  of  course  called  Monday  the  12th,  and,  adding 
ten  days  for  difference  of  styles,  made  "  Forefathers'  Day  "  the  22d. 

1  They  were  Miles  Standish,  John  Carver,  William  Bradford,  Edward  Winslow,  John 
Tilley,  Edward  Tilley,  John  Rowland,  Richard  Warren,  Steven  Hopkins,  Edward  Doty ; 
two  seamen,  John  Allerton  and  Thomas  English,  hired  by  the  colonists ;  of  the  ship's 
company,  Clark,  the  first  mate,  Coppin,  the  master-gunner,  and  three  unnamed  sailors. 


394 


THE   FATHERS   OF   NEW  ENGLAND.         [CHAP.  XI V. 


and  litle  runing  brooks,"  they  decided  upon  no  particular  site  for  the 
colony,  for  they  "afterwards,"  says  Bradford,  "took  better  view  of 
the  place,  and  resolved  where  to  pitch  their  dwelling."  Nor  could 
they  have  spent  much  time  in  a  survey  of  the  shores  of  the  harbor, 
for  they  returned  that  day  to  their  companions,  at  the  end  of  Cape 
Cod,  to  report  the  success  of  the  expedition  —  a  return  saddened  by 
the  news  of  the  death  of  William  Bradford's  wife,  who,  during  his 
absence,  had  fallen  overboard  and  was  drowned.  With  this  voyage 
of  the  shallop  no  tradition  seems  to  be  connected.  We  have  only 


Map  of   Plymouth   Harbor. 

the  cold,  bare  records  of  ordinary  facts  ;  the  rough  pioneer  work  of 
men  engaged  in  an  arduous  duty,  to  be  done  at  any  risk  of  hardship, 
and  to  be  done  quickly.  All  the  romantic  interest  that  tradition  lends 
to  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims  came  later  with  the  disembarkation  of 
the  passengers  of  the  Mayflower,  upon  the  rock  at  Plymouth. 

On  the  15th  of  December  the  Mayflower  left  her  harbor  at  Cape 
Cod ;  the  next  day,  Saturday,  the  16th,  she  dropped  her  anchor  about 
half-way  between  Plymouth  and  Clark's  Island.  On  Monday  and 
Tuesday,  the  18th  and  19th,  exploring  parties,  some  in  the  shallop, 
and  some  on  foot,  cruised  along  the  shore  or  roamed  through  the  woods 


1621.]  THE   LANDING   ON  JANUARY  4,  1621.  395 

for  several  miles.     But  it  was  not  till  Wednesday  that  a  choice  was 

made  between  two  places,  and  it  was  decided  that  the  fittest  The  May_ 

for  a  settlement  was  where  a  hill,  overlooking  the  bay  and  p^oiuh 

the  surrounding  country,  offered  the  best  site  for  a  fort  and  Decbi6'  o  s 

houses,  and  near  which  were  fields  cleared  by  the  Indians  for  Dec-26>N-s- 

their  own  planting,  and  a  plentiful  stream  of  sweet  water.    Here  some 

of  them  at  once  established  themselves.     But  communication,  with  the 

ship  was,  for  the  next  two  days,  interrupted  by  bad  weather,  which 

permitted  only  of  the  putting 

off  of  a  boat    occasionally  in 

the   intervals   of    the    storm. 

On    Saturday  those  on  shore 

felled  some  timber.     But  not 

till  Monday,  the  25th,  did  the 

passengers  generally  go   "  on 

shore,    some   to    fell    timber, 

some  to  saw,  some  to  rive,  and 

some    to    carry,    so    no    man 

rested    all    that   day."     The  _^ 

actual      beginning     Of    the     Set-     Relics  from  the  'Mayflower,1  —  John  Alden's  Bible  ;   William 
,i  T  Clark's  Mug  and  Wallet,  etc. 

tlement    was    then    made,  — 

"  to  erect  the  first  house  for  common  use  to  receive  them  and  their 

goods."  ! 

This  was  on  the  site  of  the  present  town  of  Plymouth,  and  at  the 
head  of  one  of  its  wharves,  almost  buried  in  the  roadway,  is  The  land. 
the  memorial  rock,  or  rather  what  there  is  left  of  it.2    Trust-  pjjwwai. 
worthy  tradition  verifies  it  as  that  on  which  the  passengers   o^'.fj'a1^,' 
of  the  Mayflower  landed  when,  for  the  first  time,  —  Monday,  1621'N-S- 
December  25th, —  they  left  the  ship  with  a  distinct  purpose  of  taking 
possession  of  a  new  home. 

Only  on  Tuesday  of  the  previous  week  was  this  spot  fixed  upon  ; 
the  ship  was  a  mile  and  a  half  away ;  in  the  interval  of  nearly  a  week 
the  stormy  weather  had  made  it  difficult  for  the  shallop  to  take  even 
the  needed  provisions  to  the  few  men  on  shore.  Not  till  Monday,  the 
25th,  was  the  actual  work  of  putting  up  a  shelter  on  this  chosen  spot 
begun  ;  and  then  it  seems  probable  -and  natural  —  indeed  only  till 
then  does  it  seem  possible  —  that  a  visit  was  made  by  the  company 
generally,  men,  women,  and  children,  to  their  future  home. 

And  it  was  made,  no  doubt,  with  recognition  of  the  occasion  as  some 
thing  more  than  an  ordinary  occurrence  ;  with  emotions  of  mingled 

1  Bradford's  History.     Mourt's  Relation. 

2  The  upper  portion  of  it  was  removed,  about  a  hundred  years  ago,  nearer  to  the  centre 
of  the  town. 


396 


THE   FATHERS   OF  NEW  ENGLAND.         [CHAP.  XIV. 


gladness  and  sorrow  ;  with  sad  and  tender  memories  of  that  past  life, 
ending  now  as  they  were  preparing  to  leave  the  ship  that  brought 
them  from  the  homes  they  should  never  see  again  ;  but  with  sanguine 
hope  also  in  the  new  and  free  life  on  which  they  were  about  to 
enter,  though  beginning  in  hardship  and  suffering,  —  visibly  begin 
ning,  with  almost  all  the  calamities  from  which  they  might  have  asked 
to  be  delivered  in  no  more  definite  and  forcible  prayer  than  that 
of  the  Litany  against  which  they  protested, —  "from  lightning  and 


Landing  of  John  Alden  and   Mary  Chilton. 

tempest ;  from  plague,  pestilence,  and  famine  ;  from  battle  and  mur 
der,  and  from  sudden  death." 

Still    another    tradition    connects  this  rock  with  the  general  land 
ing  of  the  Mayflower's  passengers.1     The  honor  of  being  the  first  to 

1  "  There  is  a  tradition,  as  to  the  person  who  first  leaped  upon  this  rock,  when  the  fami 
lies  came  on  shore,  December  11,  1620."  Coll.  Mass.  Hist.  Society,  vol.  iii.,  Second  Series, 
p.  174.  It  is  such  careless  statements  as  this  that  have  led  to  confusion  on  this  subject. 
"  The  families  "  were  on  hoard  the  Mayflower  in  Provincetown  harbor,  twenty-five  miles 
from  Plymouth,  on  the  llth  of  December,  1620.  The  advance  party  of  explorers  only 
landed  that  day  somewhere  on  the  Plymouth  shore. 


1621.] 


THE   FIRST   WINTER. 


397 


step  upon  the  rock  is  divided  between  John  Alden  and  Mary  Chil- 
ton.1    Neither  of  these  persons  is  named  in  the  list,  which 
professes  to  be  a  full  one,  of  those  who  in  the  shallop,  on  and  Mary n 
the  llth  of   December,  discovered   the  bay  of   Plymouth  ; 
and  certainly  no  woman  could  have  been  upon  such  an  expedition. 
Nor  is  it  likely  that  any  woman  went  on  shore  in  the  stormy  weather, 
after  the   arrival  of   the   May 
flower   in   the    harbor    on    the 
16th,  till  the   general  visit  was 
made  on  the  25th  to  the  selected 
spot.     Whoever   then   was  the 
first   to   spring  to  the  rock,  — 
about    which    there    may  have 
been,  on  such  an  occasion,  some 
pleasant  rivalry, — whether  the 
young  man  or  the  young  maiden, 
the  leap  was  made,  no  doubt, 
from   the   first    boat    from   the 
Mayflower,  on  the  25th  of  De 
cember—Jan.  4th  1621,  N.  S. 

But  even  yet  there  was  no 
final  transfer  of  the  colonists  to 
land.  The  ship  was  still  the 
home  of  the  larger  number,  and  probably  of  all  the  women  and  chil 
dren,  those  only  remaining  on  shore  who  were  engaged  in  building 
or  in  guarding  the  accumulating  property.  On  the  10th  of  January 
the  common  house  of  about  twenty  feet  square  was  nearly  finished ; 
it  was  only  then  that  a  town  of  a  single  street  was  laid  out,  and  it 
was  agreed  that  each  head  of  a  family  should  build  his  own  house  on 
the  lot  assigned  him.  The  building  went  on  slowly,  for  the  inclem 
ency  of  the  weather  permitted  of  out-door  work  for  only  half  the 
time.  Some  of  the  private  houses  were  finished  in  the  course  of  the 
winter,  but  it  was  not  till  the  21st  of  March  that  all  the  company 
went  finally  on  shore. 

Much  less  room  was  needed  now,  if  that  were  one  of  the  reasons  for 
delay  in  removing  from  the  ship.     For  the  first  two  months  those  on 
shore  were  exposed,  with  little  or  no  shelter,  to  the  rigors  of 
a  New  England  winter,  though  that  of  1620-21  was  plainly  the  winter 
one  of  unusual  mildness ;  those  in  the  ship  were  crowded 
into  close  and  unwholesome  quarters ;  provision  was  scanty  and  poor  ; 
the  scurvy  appeared  and  spread  rapidly ;  other  diseases,  engendered 

1  Notes  on  Plymouth,  Mass.,  vol.  iii.,  Second  Series,  and  Notes  on  Duxbury,  vol.  x.,  Mass. 
Hist.  Coll. 


Stone  Canopy  over   Plymouth   Rock. 


398 


THE   FATHERS   OF   NEW  ENGLAND.         [CHAP.  XIV. 


in  want  and  exposure,  became  equally  prevalent ;  and  when  the  spring 
opened  about  one  half  the  company  were  dead. 

Some  of  the  most  eminent  in  character  and  station  ;  many  in  the 
prime  of  their  days  and  their  strength,  whose  loss  to  the  colony  was 
most  serious  ;  wives,  mothers,  children,  servants  were  swept  away, 
leaving  those  who  survived  enfeebled  by  sickness  and  overwhelmed 
with  grief,  when  they  were  most  in  need  of  all  their  physical  and 
mental  energies.  Carver,  the  governor,  died  in  April,  and  his  wife 
soon  followed  him  ;  the  wife  of  William  Bradford,  who  was  Carver's 
successor,  was  drowned  —  as  we  have  already  said  —  before  the  May 
flower  left  Cape  Cod  harbor  ;  Edward  Winslow,  Miles  Standish,  Isaac 
Allerton,  were  soon  made  widowers  ;  Edward  Tillie  and  John  Tillie, 
who  were  of  the  crew  of  the  shallop  that  discovered  Plymouth  Bay, 


First  Burial  Place  near  the  Landing. 

lost  their  wives,  and  both  died  not  long  after ;  John  Allerton  and 
Thomas  English,  of  the  same  company,  soon  filled  graves  on  the  shore 
they  had  helped  to  find  ;  Mary  Chilton,  one  of  the  first,  no  doubt,  if 
not  the  very  first,  to  spring  to  the  landing-place  in  glad  expectation 
of  a  happy  future  in  a  new  home,  was  soon  alone,  both  father  and 
mother  dead  ;  others,  like  her,  were  left  orphans  ;  parents  were  left 
childless  ;  in  some  cases  whole  families  were  carried  off  ;  in  others 
there  was  only  a  single  survivor.  Hardly  a  day  passed  for  four  months 
that  they  did  not  bring  out  their  dead. 

So  the  winter  passed.  Little  happened  to  break  the  sad  monotony 
of  intervals  of  work  on  houses  which  they  might  not  live  to  occupy, 
and  nursing  the  sick  till  most  of  them  were  taken  to  those  narrow 
houses  which  they  would  never  leave.  Twice  the  wretched  commu- 


1621.] 


THE   FIRST  WINTER   AT   PLYMOUTH. 


399 


nity  were  in  danger  of  being  burnt  out  of  their  poor  shelters  on  shore, 
the  thatched  roofs  of  their  two  buildings,  one  for  the  well,  the  othej 
for  the  sick,  taking  fire  by  accident  and  being  consumed.  Lurking 
savages  were  sometimes  seen  in  the  neighborhood,  but  they  made  no 
attempt  to  molest  the  new  comers.  Precautions,  however,  were  taken 
against  any  attack  from  them,  and  Miles  Standish,  who  had  been  a 
soldier  in  the  Low  Countries,  was  entrusted  with  the  conduct  of  mili 
tary  affairs,  as  he  was  generally  with  the  command  of  all  expeditions. 


Governor  Carver's  Chair. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


THE   PILGRIMS   AT   PLYMOUTH. 

THE  COMING  OF  FRIENDLY  INDIANS.  —  SAMOSET  AND  SQUANTO.  —  CAPTAIN  DERMER'S 
PREVIOUS  VISIT  TO  PLYMOUTH. — STANDISH'S  VISIT  TO  BOSTON  HARBOR.  —  REIN 
FORCEMENTS  FROM  ENGLAND.  —  THE  FIRST  CHRISTMAS  AT  PLYMOUTH.  —  HOSTILE 
MESSAGE  FROM  THE  NARRAGANSETTS.  —  ARRIVAL  OF  WESTON'S  COLONISTS.  —  THEIR 
SETTLEMENT  AT  WESSAGUSSKT. — AN  INDIAN  CONSPIRACY.  —  STANDISH'S  EXPEDI 
TION  AND  THE  PLOT  DEFEATED.  TlIE  GRIEF  OF  PASTOR  ROBINSON.  ARRIVAL  OF 

ROBERT  GORGES.  —  FIRST  ALLOTMENT  OF  LAND  IN  PLYMOUTH.  —  JOHN  PEIRCE'S 
PATENT.  —  THE  LYFORD  AND  OLDHAM  CONSPIRACY.  —  THEIR  BANISHMENT.  — 
BREAKING-UP  OF  THE  LONDON  COMPANY.  —  THE  PILGRIMS  THROWN  ON  THEIR  OWN 
RESOURCES.  —  THK  FISHING  STATION  AT  CAPE  ANN.  —  ENCOUNTER  BETWEEN  CAP 
TAIN  STANDISH  AND  MR.  HEWES.  —  THE  DORCHESTER  SETTLEMENT  AT  CAPE  ANN. — 
CONANT'S  CHARGE  OF  IT,  AND  HIS  REMOVAL  TO  NAUMKEAG.  —  SETTLEMENTS 
ABOUT  BOSTON  HARBOR.  —  MORTON  OF  MERRY-MOUNT. —  STANDISH'S  ARREST  OF 
MORTON. 

NEW  events  came  with  the  spring  to  the  colony  at  Plymouth,  as 
well  as  health  and  hope.      In  March  a  naked  Indian  stalked  boldly  in 


Visit  of  Samoset  to  the  Colony. 


among  them,  and  greeted  them  in  a  few  English  words,  which  he  had 
learned  from  the  fishermen  and  other  voyagers  on  the  coast  of  Maine, 


1621.]  FIRST  INTERCOURSE   WITH  INDIANS.  401 

his  home  being  on  the  Pemaquid.     This  man's  name  was  Samoset, 
but  why  he  was  so  far  from  home  is  not  clear.     He  may  TheyisUof 
have  been  brought  and  left  in  the  neighborhood  by  Captain  1^^.!! 
Dermer,  who  had  twice  been  upon  this  coast,  making  his  Samoset- 
second  voyage  only  the  previous  summer.     On   his   first  voyage  he 
visited  the  place,  "  which,"  he  said,  "  in  Captain  Smith's  map  is  called 
Plimouth.     And,"  he  adds,  "  I  would  that  the  first  Plantation  might 
here  be  seated,  if  there  come  to  the  number  of  Fifty  persons,  or  up 
wards."  l 

From  this  Samoset  they  learned  that  the  Indian  name  of  the  place 
they  had  settled  upon  was  Patuxet,  and  that  about  four  years  before 
all  the  inhabitants  had  been  swept  off  by  a  plague.2  He  told  them 
who  were  their  nearest  Indian  neighbors  —  Massasoit's  people,  the 
Wampanoags,  and  the  Nausets  on  Cape  Cod.  It  was  these  Nausets 
with  whom  the  Pilgrims  had  their  harmless  fight  soon  after  landing, 
and  who  were  most  inimical  to  the  English  because  seven  of  their  tribe 
were  kidnapped  by  Hunt  in  1614,  the  other  twenty  being  taken  from 
Patuxet  —  Plymouth. 

Samoset  brought  to  the  settlement  some  of  the  friendly  Indians,  and 
among  them  Tisquantum  or  Squanto,  one    of    those  whom 
Weymouth  took  to  England,  fifteen  years  before,  and  gave  tumor 
to  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges.     It  had  been  this  man's  fortune 
to  be  again  kidnapped,  this  time  by  Hunt,  and  to  fall  into  the  hands 
of  Dermer,  who  brought  him  home  to  Patuxet,  —  "  my  savage's  native 
country,"  Dermer  writes,  where   he   found   "  all   dead,"  nearly  two 
years   before.      It  was  fortunate  for  the  new-comers  that  their  first 
intercourse  with  the  Indians  was  through  these  two  men,  who  were 
friendly  to  the  English  and  could  speak  their  tongue.     One  immediate 

1  Bradford  says  of  this  letter  that  it  is  "a  relation  written  by  him  [Dermer],  and  given 
me  by   a  friend,    bearing  date  June   30  Ano  1620 In  which  relation  to  his  hon 
ored  friend  he  hath  these  passages  of  this  very  place."     Morton  in  the  Memorial,  copies  ver 
batim  from  Bradford.     "I  will  first  begin  [says  the  letter]  with  that  place  from  whence 
Squanto  or  Tisquantum  was  taken  away,  which  in  Captain  Smith's  map  is  called  Plimouth  : 
and  I  would  that  Plimouth  had  the  same  commodities.     I  would  that  the  first  Plantation 
might  here  be  seated  if  there  come  to  the  number  of  50  persons  or  upward."     Morton  evi 
dently  mistakes  in  supposing  this  letter  of  June  30,  1620,  referred  to  the  visit  of  that  spring. 
It  was  in  the  summer  of  1619  that  Dermer  was  at  Plymouth. 

2  There  can  be  no  doubt  from  the  concurring  testimony  of  several  of  the  writers  of  that 
period,  that  such  a  pestilence  prevailed  throughout  New  England  a  few  years  before  the 
settlement  of  Plymouth.    The  story  was  that  a  party  of  Frenchmen,  trading  on  the  coast  of 
Massachusetts,  aroused  the  enmity  of  the  natives,  who  fell  upon  and  killed  all  but  five  whom 
they  kept  as  servants.     None  of  them  lived  long,  and  the  last  survivor  predicted  to  the 
Indians,  just  before  his  death,  that  God  was  so  angry  with  them  for  their  bloody  and  cruel 
deed  that  He  would  destroy  them  all.     The  Indians  answered  that  they  were  so  many  God 
could  not  kill  them.     The  prediction,  nevertheless,  was  fulfilled,  and  the  more  pious  of  the 
early  settlers  believed  that  the  pestilence  was  sent  as  a  special  providence  to  rid  the  country 
of  the  heathen  and  make  room  for  the  coming  of  a  Christian  people. 


402  THE  PILGRIMS  AT  PLYMOUTH.  [CHAP.  XV. 

good  result  followed,  for  the  natives  brought,  within  a  few  days,  the 
most  powerful  Sagamore  of  that  region,  Massasoit,  with  whom  the 
colonists  made  a  treaty  both  offensive  and  defensive.  They  were  not 
much  impressed  with  the  dignity  of  this  first  Indian  king  whom  they 
met,  for  he  was  distinguished  from  his  followers  only  by  a  string  of 
white  bone  beads  about  his  neck  ;  his  face  was  painted  of  a  sad  red, 
and  both  face  and  head  were  well  oiled  so  that  he  "  looked  greasily." 

Squanto  became  at  once  an  intimate  and  valued  friend.  He  taught 
them  how  to  plant  maize,  and  to  manure  it  with  the  alewives  which 
in  April  came  up  the  brook  in  great  numbers  to  spawn  ;  and  these  he 
showed  them  how  to  take.  It  was  a  service  of  no  slight  value,  for  the 
wheat  and  peas,  and  other  English  seed  the  colonists  sowed,  proved 
almost  worthless,  either  from  defect  in  cultivation,  or  from  delay  in 
visit  to  planting.  Later  in  the  season  the  Indian  guided  two  am- 
fncTother*  bassadors,  Winslow  and  Hopkins,  across  the  country  to  Mas- 
piaces.  sasoit's  chief  village,  Pokanoket,  now  Warren,  Rhode  Island, 
to  confirm  the  treaty  of  peace  and  friendship  made  with  him  at  Plym 
outh.  The  pleasant  weather  between  seed-time  and  harvest  was 
wisely  used  in  learning  the  character  of  the  surrounding  region,  in 
making  the  acquaintance  of  the  nearest  native  tribes,  and  in  acquir 
ing  an  influence  over  them. 

The  cape  was  explored  ;  Boston  Harbor  was  visited,  and  the  sight 
of  its  islands,  then  covered  with  woods,  its  sheltered  coves,  and  its 
navigable  streams,  into  which  fish  of  every  kind  known  on  that  coast 
swarmed  in  their  season,  excited  keen  regret  that  their  lines  had  not 
fallen  in  such  pleasant  places.  The  health  of  the  colonists  was  now 
so  completely  established  that  ten  men  could  be  spared  to  go  off  upon 
some  of  these  excursions  —  half,  at  least,  of  their  effective  force,  for 
the  whole  colony,  including  women  and  children,  was  reduced  to  about 
fifty  persons,  and  seven  small  houses  held  them  all.  Those  left  at 
home  were  employed  in  fishing  and  tending  the  few  acres  of  the  ex 
pected  harvest.  Of  food  there  was  abundance ;  game  was  plentiful, 
especially  wild  turkeys,  which  long  since  disappeared  from  the  At 
lantic  sea-coast,  and  deer,  which  to  this  day  roam  in  the  woods  from 
Plymouth  to  Cape  Cod.1 

In  November  came  the  first  reinforcement  of  thirty-five  persons  in 
the  ship  Fortune.  She  brought  also  a  new  patent,  issued  to  John 

1  In  the  autumn  of  this  year  the  Governor  (says  Winslow,  in  Mourt's  Relation)  "sent 
four  men  on  fowling,  that  so  we  might  after  a  more  speciall  manner  rejoice  together  after 
we  had  gathered  the  fruit  of  our  labours."  This  is  thought  to  be  the  origin  of  the  New 
England  festival  of  Thanksgiving.  But  special  reference  to  such  a  day  by  name  comes  the 
next  year,  at  the  same  season,  for  a  fruitful  harvest,  when,  says  Morton  in  his  Memorial, 
"for  which  mercy,  in  time  convenient,  they  also  solemnized  a  Day  of  Thanksgiving  unto 
the  Lord." 


1621.] 


A  PATENT   FROM  THE   PLYMOUTH   COMPANY. 


403 


Peirce  and  associates  by  the  Plymouth  Company,  which  had  received 
its  charter  the  November  previous,  and  had  given  to  the  New 


Patent 


Plymouth  Puritans  the  first  patent  it  granted.  It  was  the  granted  to 
first  time  the  exiles  had  heard  from  England,  and  the  letters 
were  filled  with  complaints  from  the  London  adventurers  that  the 
Mayflower,  which  had  returned  in  the  spring,  had  come  without  a 
cargo.  To  such  ungenerous  reproaches  Bradford  —  who  was  now 
governor  —  replied  in  terms  as  pathetic  as  they  were  dignified,  that 
"  it  pleased  God  to  vissite  us  with  death  daily,  and  with  so  generall 
a  disease,  that  the  living  were  scarce  able  to  burie  the  dead  ;  and  the 
well  not  in  any  measure  sufficiente  to  tend  the  sick."  This  second 
ship,  however,  was  laden  with  lumber  and  some  peltries,  but  unfor 
tunately  only  a  small  part  of  her  cargo  ever  reached  England,  as  she 
was  taken  by  the  French  on  the  homeward  passage. 

The  second  winter  passed  without  unusual  hardship  or  sickness; 


whereof  the  said  President  &  Counsell  haue 
to  the  one  pt  of  this  pnte  Indenture  sett  their  seales  And  to 
th'otner  pt  hereof  the  said  John  Peirce  in  the  name  of  himself 
and  his  said  Associat£  haue  sett  to  his  scale  geven  the  day  and 
yeeres  first  aboue  written/ 


Signatures   to   Plymouth  Patent.1 

1  This  patent  is  preserved  at  Plymouth,  Mass.,  and  is  the  oldest  document  now  in  exist 
ence  relating  to  her  history,  as  well  as  the  first  known  grant  made  by  the  Plymouth  Com 
pany.  It  is  published  in  full  in  vol.  ii.,  Fourth  Series,  Mass.  Hist.  Coll.,  from  which  we 
copy  the  fac-similes  of  the  signatures  of  the  President  and  Council  who  signed  it,  namely,  the 
Duke  of  Lenox,  the  Marquis  of  Hamilton,  the  Earl  of  Warwick,  Lord  Sheffield,  and  Sir 
Ferdinando  Gorges- 


THE   PILGRIMS   AT   PLYMOUTH. 


[CHAP.  XV. 


there  was  enough  to  eat ;  order,  security,  and  sobriety  were  maintained 
by  strict  discipline,  the  discipline,  however,  of  a  mixed  civil  and  mili 
tary  rule  and  not  exclusively  of  a  rigid  religious  conformity.  The 
better  and  the  larger  number  were  heedful  of  their  own  religious  walk 
and  conversation,  as  became  a  people  who  for  the  sake  of  their  faith 
had  submitted  to  so  many  years  of  exile,  arid  who  had  taken  refuge, 
at  last,  in  the  wilderness  that  they  might  preserve  their  allegiance  to 


their  convictions  as  well  as  to  their 
country.  Civil  order  they  valued 
for  its  own  sake,  and  with  that  sound 
common  sense,  which  on  a  larger  field  Christmas  Revellers. 

would  be  called  statesmanship,  se 
cured  it  by  enforcing  it.  But  that  they  did  not  deny  to  others  the 
freedom  of  conscience  which  they  claimed  for  themselves,  is 
evident  from  a  little  incident  with  the  relation  of  which 
Bradford  closes  his  record  of  the  year,  and  which  he  calls  a 
"  passage  rather  of  mirth  than  of  waight."  On  "  the  day 
called  Christmas  day,"  as  he  and  others  of  the  Leyden  congregation 
went  out  to  their  usual  labor,  some  of  those  who  had  recently  arrived 
in  the  Fortune  excused  themselves,  as  it  was,  they  said,  against  their 
consciences  to  work  on  that  day.  If  it  was  a  matter  of  conscience,  the 


Governor 
Bradford 
and  the 
Christmas 
revellers. 


1622.]  THE   NARRAGANSETT  INDIANS.  405 

governor  assented,  then  they  should  be  excused  till  better  informed. 
But  when  on  returning  at  noon  from  work  these  people  were  found 
playing  at  ball,  pitching  the  bar,  and  at  other  games  in  the  street,  the 
governor,  with  more  of  humor  than  of  that  grim  intolerance  which  is 
often  supposed  to  be  the  ground-work  of  the  Puritan  character,  sent 
them  to  their  houses  and  their  devotions,  if  they  had  any  to  pay,  with 
the  reasonable  injunction  that  it  was  against  his  conscience  they  should 
play  while  others  worked. 

The  courage  and  firmness  which  secured  order  at  home,  was  no  less 
sturdy  in  maintaining  peace  abroad.     The  Narragansett  Indians  sent 
to  Plymouth,  in  token  of  enmity  and  of  hostile  intentions,  a 
bundle  of   arrows  tied  together  with  the    skin  of    a  rattle-  theNaraa0- 
snake.     This  was  the  most  numerous  and  most  warlike  tribe  g 
in  New  England,  numbering,  it  is  supposed,  thirty  thousand,  of  whom 
five  thousand  were  warriors.     The  little  colony,  in  which  there  were 
not  more  than  fifty  men  capable  of  bearing  arms,  may  not  have  known 
the  full  strength  of  these  Narragansetts,  but  they  knew,  at  least,  that 
so  numerous  a  people  would  be  formidable  enemies.     So  soon,  never 
theless,  as  they  understood  from  Squanto  the  purport  of  this  symbolic 
message,  the  skin  of  the  rattlesnake  was  stuffed  with  powder  and  ball 
and  returned.     The  Indians  were  at  no  loss  to  comprehend  both  the 
meaning  of  the  answer  and  the  spirit  that  prompted  it,  and  the  Pil 
grims  were  unmolested. 

The  town,  of  seven  dwellings  and  two  public  buildings,  was,  how 
ever,  surrounded  with  palisades,  as  a  measure  of  precaution  ;  the 
order  of  a  military  garrison,  both  for  peace  within  and  without,  was 
established  ;  all  the  men  were  enrolled  in  four  companies,  with  time 
and  place  appointed  for  mounting  guard,  for  drill,  and  for  general 
muster ;  and  when,  in  the  spring  of  1622,  the  news  came  of  the  mas 
sacre  in  Virginia,  the  building  of  a  fort  was  begun  within  the  pal 
isades,  on  what  is  now  known  as  u  the  burial-hill  "  of  Plymouth. 
There  were  occasional  alarms  from  the  Indians ;  but  that  at  first, 
seemingly  the  most  serious,  was  a  false  report  raised  by  Squanto,  who, 
coining  to  entertain  a  mistaken  notion  of  his  own  importance,  at 
tempted  to  enhance  it  by  arousing  the  fears  and  jealousies  of  his 
own  people  and  the  English,  which  he  alone  was  to  pacify.  He 
learned  better  behavior  for  the  future,  however,  when  Massasoit 
demanded  his  head,  and  his  Plymouth  friends  pardoned  and  saved 
him. 

The  first  difficulty  that  had  any  lasting  result  came  through  the 
conduct  of  their  own  countrymen.  There  was,  indeed,  a  scarcity  of 
food,  in  the  summer  of  1622,  but  that  was  relieved  partly  by  supplies 
which  Winslow  obtained  among  the  English  fishermen  on  the  coast  of 


406 


THE   PILGRIMS   AT   PLYMOUTH. 


[CHAP.  XV. 


Maine,  and  partly  from  several  English  vessels  which,  in  the  course  of 
the  season,  visited  Plymouth.  Among  these  arrivals  were  two  sent 
out  by  that  Mr.  Weston,  of  London,  who  hitherto  had  been  an  active 
and  influential  friend  of  their  company,  but  had  now  retired  from  it 
and  proposed  to  plant  a  colony  of  his  own. 

The  people  whom  Weston  sent  out  were  not  Puritans.  Rude  and 
western's  profane  fellows,  he  himself  acknowledged,  many  of  them 
wl^agus-  were  ?  and  Mr.  Peirce,  in  whose  name  the  new  charter  was 
sett-  taken  out,  wrote  :  "  As  for  Mr.  Weston's  company,  they  are 

so  base  in  condition,  for  the  most  part,  as,  in  all  appearance,  not  fit 
for  an  honest  man's  company."  Such  as  they  were,  they  were  landed 


Burial   Hill. 


at  Plymouth,  where  they  remained  for  some  time,  helping  to  consume 
the  stores  to  which  they  had  added  nothing  when  they  came,  and  did 
nothing  to  increase  while  they  stayed.  To  support  them  was  a  burden  ; 
to  be  compelled  to  tolerate  their  idleness  and  evil  example  was  a  mis 
fortune.  Plymouth  was  happily  rid  of  their  presence  when  they  de 
termined  to  establish  a  separate  colony  at  Wichaguscusset,  —  or  Wes- 
sagusset,  —  now  Weymouth,  where  abroad  but  shallow  stream  empties 
into  the  harbor,  eight  or  nine  miles  south  of  Boston. 

Little  good  was  to  be  expected  from  such  a  company  ;  and  there 
came  nothing  but  evil.  It  was  not  long  before  the  complaints  of  the 
Indians  were  loud  and  bitter  against  them.  Improvident  and  idle,  or 
diligent  only  in  stealing,  they  soon  reached  the  extremity  of  want 
and  suffering.  Some  died  of  hunger.  Some  sold  their  clothes  and 
blankets  to  the  natives  for  food  ;  others  rendered  them  the  most  men 
ial  services  to  keep  off  starvation.  Many  dispersed  themselves  about 
the  woods  and  along  the  shore  seeking  to  subsist  on  ground  nuts  and 
shell-fish.  To  the  Indians  they  soon  became  objects  of  contempt  for 
their  weakness,  and  of  resentment  for  their  thefts  and,  perhaps,  for 
graver  wrongs ;  for  their  leader  was  accused — and  he  would  not  be 
likely,  if  the  charge  were  true,  to  be  the  only  offender  —  of  making 


1622.]  WESTON'S   COLONY.  407 

mistresses  of  the  Indian  women.  But  the  natives  must  have  come  at 
length  to  despise  much  more  than  they  feared  them,  for  they  would 
snatch  from  between  their  hands  the  food  the  whites  had  prepared 
for  themselves,  and  take  from  under  them  the  blankets  in  which  they 
had  wrapped  themselves  for  sleep.  So  far  from  resenting  and  assum 
ing  to  punish  these  aggressions  of  the  natives,  they  attempted  to  ap 
pease  their  anger  by  hanging  one  of  the  colonists  for  stealing  corn. 

I'he  culprit,  it  is  related,  was  one  of  the  stoutest  among  them  — 
so  stout,  and  strong,  and  courageous,  that  his  fellows  did  not  Hanging  of 
venture  to  arrest  him  openly,  but  secured  him  by  some  strat-  a  colonist- 
agem,  and  hanged  him  thus  bound.  According  to  the  same  narra 
tive  it  was  proposed  and  seriously  considered,  whether  it  would  not 
be  better  to  spare  this  real  criminal,  who  was  young  and  vigorous, 
and  might  yet  be  of  great  service,  and  substitute  for  him  on  the  gal 
lows  one  who  was  old,  and  impotent,  and  sickly.  The  project  was 
overruled,  however,  not  so  much,  apparently,  from  any  recognition 
of  the  essential  wrong  which  it  was  proposed  to  inflict  upon  the  old 
man,  as  from  the  evident  inexpediency  of  resorting  to  an  artifice 
which  would  exasperate  but  not  deceive  the  Indians.1 

This  pestilent   colony,  the   Massachusetts   Indians,  in  conjunction 
with   others,  resolved,  at   length,  to   exterminate  ;   and   as 

.     Discovery  of 

they   naturally   supposed   such   an   act    would   be   avenged  an  Indian 

conspiracy 

by  the  countrymen  of  the  Wessagusset  people,  at  Plymouth, 
they  also  were  to  be  fallen  upon  at  the  same  time,  and  the  country 
to  be  thus  rid  altogether  of  the  English.  But  before  the  savages 
were  ready  to  put  this  plan  in  execution,  it  happened  that  news  came 
to  Plymouth  of  the  serious  illness  of  Massasoit.  Edward  Winslow 
and  John  Hamden,2  were  at  once  sent  to  Pokanoket  to  express  sym- 

1  The  story  rests  on  the  authority  of  Thomas  Morton  (New  English  Canaan,  Third 
Book,  chap,  iv.),  who,  however  much  he  may  have  hated  and  misrepresented  the  people  of 
Plymouth,  does  not  appear  to  have  borne  any  ill-will  towards  those  of  Wessagusset,  and 
may,  indeed,  have  been  one  of  that  company.     His  circumstantial  statement  does  not  look 
like  an  invention.     Butler,  in  Hudibras,  makes  use  of  the  story  to  throw  ridicule  upon  the 
Puritans,  who  of  course  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  incident,  if  it  ever  occurred.     He  rep 
resents  the  culprit  as  a  shoemaker  who  had  slain  an  Indian  because  he  was  an  infidel,  and 
then  adds,  — 

"  But  they  maturely  having  weighed, 
They  had  no  more  but  him  of  the  trade, 
A  man  that  served  them  in  a  double 
Capacity,  to  teach  and  cobble, 
Resolved  to  spare  him  ;  yet  to  do 
The  Indian  Iloghgan  Moghgan,  too, 
Impartial  j  ustice,  in  his  stead  did 
Hang  an  old  weaver  that  was  bed-rid." 

2  Similarity  of  name  has  sometimes  suggested  that  this  was  John  Hampden,  the  Eng 
lish  patriot,  but  the  conjecture  has  no  other  foundation,  and  other  reasons  make  it  alto 
gether  improbable. 


408  THE   PILGRIMS   AT  PLYMOUTH.  [CiiAP.  XV. 

pathy,  and  if  possible,  render  aid  to  one  who  had  shown  himself  a, 
firm  friend  and  ally  of  the  colonists.  The  chief  was  apparently  in  a 
dying  condition,  but  Winslow  by  timely  remedies  and  careful  nursing, 
restored  him  in  a  few  days  to  health,  to  the  amazement  of  his  friends 
and  followers,  who  looked  upon  his  cure  as  a  miracle.  The  gratitude 
of  Massasoit  was  unbounded,  and  he  showed  it  by  revealing  to  Hob- 
bamock,  Winslow's  Indian  guide,  the  plot  against  the  colonies,  in 
which  he  had  been  urged  to  take  part. 

An  example  had  been  given  within  a  year  in  Virginia,  of  how  sud 
den,  stealthy,  and  complete,  a  massacre  by  Indians  might  be.  The 
information  given  by  Massasoit  was  discussed  in  the  "  yearly  court- 
day,"  or  town-meeting  on  the  day  of  the  election  in  March,1  and 
it  was  determined  that  an  expedition  be  sent  to  Wessagusset.  This 

consisted  of  only  eight  men, 
commanded  by  Captain  Stan- 
dish,  who  thought  proper  to 
take  no  more,  lest  the  sus 
picions  of  the  Indians  should 

Sword  of   Miles  Standish.  T    •.          .-, 

be  aroused  by  the  appearance 

of  a  greater  number.  Standish  found  the  colony  in  a  condition  quite 
as  forlorn  and  wretched  as  had  been  represented,  so  scattered,  heed 
less,  imbecile,  and  unsuspicious,  that  they  would  be  an  easy  prey  to 
the  savages  when  these  were  ready  to  strike  the  blow.  Only  a  few 
of  the  leading  men  among  them,  when  told  of  the  designs  of  the 
Indians,  could  believe  in  the  report,  and  to  those  few  it  was  confirmed 
by  some  circumstances  which  they  had  themselves  observed. 

Some  conference  was  had  with  the  Indians,  who  suspected  the  de 
sign  of  Standish,  laughed  at,  and  defied  him.     They  were 

Standish  at          fo  .  J. 

wessagus-  too  cautious  to  expose  themselves  in  any  large  number  to 
gether,  and  Standish  seems  to  have  recalled  the  advice  of 
Massasoit,  to  cut  off  the  chiefs.  Getting  two  of  them,  Pecksuot  and 
Wituwamat,  with  a  brother  of  the  latter  in  a  room  by  themselves, 
the  Captain  ordered  the  door  to  be  closed,  and  then  with  two  or  three 
of  his  own  men,  attacked  the  Indians.  The  fight  was  hand  to  hand 
and  desperate,  but  after  a  long  struggle  the  two  chiefs  were  killed,  and 
the  other  secured,  who  was  afterwards  hanged.  Some  others  were 
killed  at  the  same  time  at  other  places  ;  so,  also,  when  the  alarm  was 
spread,  were  several  of  the  English,  who  had  wandered  from  home. 
A  more  general  battle,  or  rather  skirmish,  afterward  occurred  in  an 

1  The  annual  Town- meeting  —  or  "  March-meeting  day"  as  it  was  called — for  the 
choosing  of  public  officers  and  attending  to  the  public  business  of  the  town,  continued  to 
be  held,  till  within  a  few  years,  in  March  in  Massachusetts.  It  probably  originated  in 
the  "  Court-day  "  of  the  Pilgrims. 


1623.]  STANDISH   AND   THE   INDIAN   CONSPIRATORS.  409 

open  field,  when  the  Indians  fled  without  loss  on  either  side.  The 
head  of  Wituwamat  was  taken  to  Plymouth,  and  exposed  as  a 
warning  to  the  natives.  Thither  Standish  returned,  taking  a  portion 
of  the  Wessagusset  men  with  him  ;  others  going  in  their  own  pinnace 
to  Monhegan,  on  the  coast  of  Maine.  The  colony  was  thus  entirely 
broken  up. 

This  was  the  first  Indian  blood  shed  by  the  Pilgrims,  driven 
thereto  in  self-defence  by  the  misconduct  of  others.  The  im-  Thefirst  In_ 
mediate  result  was  beneficial,  whatever  may  have  been  the  dian  killed- 
consequences  in  later  times  in  the  enmity  planted  in  the  minds  of  a 
people  who  never  forget  and  never  forgive  an  injury.  For  the  time 
being,  however,  the  energetic  conduct  of  Standish  spread  terror,  not 
only  among  the  Massachusetts  Indians,  but  those  of  other  tribes  en 
gaged  with  them  in  the  plot  against  the  English.  They  dispersed 
themselves  in  the  woods  and  swamps,  to  avoid  the  punishment  which 
they  feared  would  fall  next  upon  them  ;  their  planting  was  neglected, 
and  in  the  destitution  of  food  that  followed  in  a  few  months,  many 
perished.1 

When  the  news  of  this  affair  reached  Holland,  Mr.  Robinson,  the 
pastor,  wrote :    "  Concerning  the  killing  of   those  poor  In- 

i .  P  &  Mr.  Robin- 

dians  of  which  we  heard  at  first  by  reporte,  &  since  by  more  son;sre- 
certaine  relation,  oh  !  how  happy  a  thing  had  it  been,  if  you 
had  converted  some  before  you  had  killed  any  ;  besids,  wher  bloud  is 
one  begune  to  be  shed,  it  is  seldome  stanched  of  a  long  time  after." 
It  was  certainly  a  humane  and  prophetic  judgment,  befitting  the  man 
and  his  profession,  but  not  quite  so  discriminating  as  it  might  have 
been  as  to  the  part  his  own  people  were  constrained  to  take  in  their 
own  defence.  The  experience  of  two  centuries  and  a  half  has  since 
shown  how  easy  it  is  to  kill,  and  how  hard  to  convert  an  Indian  ;  and 
however  deplorable  the  fact  may  be,  it  is  unquestionably  true  that 
occasions  have  arisen  —  and  this  was  one  of  them  —  where  the  choice 
of  killing  or  converting  was  not  presented.  Still  less  just  was  the 
excellent  pastor  to  Captain  Standish  in  the  same  letter.  "  Let  me  be 
bould,"  he  adds,  "to  exhorte  you  seriously  to  consider  of  the  disposi 
tion  of  your  Captaine,  whom  I  love,  and  am  persuaded  the  Lord  in 
great  mercie  &  for  much  good  hath  sent  you  him,  if  you  use  him 

aright Ther   is  cause  to  fear  that   by  occasion,  espetially  of 

provocation,  ther  may  be  wanting  that  tendernes  of  the  life  of  man 
(made  after  God's  image)  which  is  meete."  The  brethren  at  Plym 
outh  might  have  answered  that  the  good  pastor  at  Leyden,  who  knew 
nothing  of  the  North  American  Indians,  could  hardly  judge  as  to  the 
proper  line  of  duty  for  Captain  Standish,  shut  up  in  a  room  with  a 

i  Wmslow's  "  Kelation  "  in  Young's  Chronicles  of  the  Pilgrims. 


410  THE   PILGRIMS   AT  PLYMOUTH.  [CHAP.  XV. 

naked  savage,  bent  upon  taking  his  life,  and  armed  with  a  long,  keen, 
doubled-edged  knife  ground  to  a  fine  point. 

Weston  arrived  not  long  after  the  dispersion  of  his  colony.     When 

a  few  months  later  Captain  Robert  Gorges,  the  recently  ap- 

captam         pointed  governor  of  all  New  England,  came  to  Plymouth, 

he  proposed  to  arrest  Weston  and  put  him  upon  trial  to  an 

swer,  among  other  things,  for  the  ill  conduct  of  his  men  at  Wessagus- 

set,  whereby  the  peace  of  the  whole  country  had  been   endangered. 

Weston's    sufficient    defence 


:          J—  r>~      was'    ^at    ne 

ra  fo  rOT  fi  u9  .  held  responsible  for  acts  done 

Signature  of  William  Bradford.  bj      Othei'S      ill     his      absence. 

Other  charges,  brought  then 

and  later,  he  could  not  so  easily  answer.  But  Governor  Bradford  and 
others  of  the  leading  men  at  Plymouth  could  not  forget  their  former 
relations  with  Weston,  and  the  services  he  had  rendered  in  the  outset 
of  their  enterprise.  Partly  at  their  intercession,  and  partly  because 
Gorges  was  at  length  convinced  that  nothing  could  be  gained  by  a 
continued  pursuit  of  a  man  bankrupt  alike  in  fortune  and  character, 
Plymouth  and  New  England  became  happily  rid  of  that  unfortunate 
adventurer  in  the  course  of  the  next  winter. 

The  patent  Robert  Gorges  brought  with  him  gave  him  a  vague  title 
to  all  the  mainland  in  New  England  known  as  Massachusetts, 
setereoccu-  on  the  northeast  side  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  with  all  the  coast 
agaitfaban-  for  ten  miles  in  a  straight  line  toward  the  northeast,  and 
thirty  miles  into  the  interior  for  that  breadth.  He,  never 
theless,  assumed  Wessagusset  —  on  the  South  shore  —  to  be  within 
the  limits  assigned  him,  and  landed  his  stores  and  built  warehouses  on 
the  site  that  Weston  had  chosen.  Gorges  himself,  however,  soon  re 
turned  to  England  ;  his  people  dispersed,  in  the  course  of  the  year, 
some  going  home,  some  to  Virginia,  except  a  few  who  preferred  to 
remain  at  Wessagusset. 

The  year  1623  was  otherwise  memorable  in  the  annals  of  the 
Pilgrims.  The  laboring  in  common  and  on  joint  account,  to  which 
they  were  bound  by  their  articles  of  agreement  with  the  London 
adventurers,  was  a  source  of  so  much  injustice,  discontent,  and  con 
fusion,  and  so  evident  a  hindrance  to  their  prosperity  —  almost  to 
their  continued  existence  —  that  the  necessity  of  some  modification 
of  that  arrangement  was  forced  upon  them.  The  most  obvious  evil 
was  the  radical  one  ;  there  could  be  no  true  prosperity  for  the  whole 
so  long  as  there  was  no  just  proportion  between  the  labor  of  the  indi 
vidual  and  the  welfare  it  secured  to  him.  It  was  proposed,  therefore, 
as  an  experiment,  to  make  allotments  of  lands,  for  one  year,  to  each 


1623.] 


SCARCITY   OF  FOOD. 


411 


colonist  to  cultivate  on  his  own  account.     That  there  was  any  hesita 
tion  in  resorting  to  so  imperative  a  measure  was  partly  be 
cause  it  was  an  infringement  upon  the  jointstock  agreement,  SSSW 
and  partly  because  it  was  the  persuasion  of  the  time  that  individual8- 
a  colony  in  a  new  country  could  only  exist  as  the  dependency  of  a 
corporation,  with  a  community  of  goods  in  anything  it  produced. 

In  Plymouth,  as  in  Virginia,  the  change  once  made  became  per 
petual,    and  from   it  dates  the  beginning  of  true  prosperity.     The 
right    of   every   man,   thencefor 
ward,   to    ownership   in  the 
land   and    to     the    fruits   of 
his    own    labor     was    estab 
lished.     The    "  partic 
ular     planting  "  —  or 
each  man  for    himself 
—  was  at  once  proved 
to  be  so  advantageous, 
that     "  any     generall 
want  or  famine,"   says 
Bradford,  writing  more 
than  twenty  years  af 
terward,     "  hath     not 
been     amongst     them 
since  to  this  day." 

And  there  was  need 
enough  that  some  way 
should   be   devised    to 
escape  from  that  condition  of  almost  extreme  want  under  which,  for  the 
first  three  years,  the  colony  generally  suffered.     Above  all  people  of 
the  world,  as  one  of  them  said,  they  had  reason  to  pray  for 
their  daily  bread,  it  so  often  happened  that  none  knew  at  sdrclty  of 

•    i,        i  ,1  L     -i        >      p        -i  f  rn  ,      food  for  the 

mgnt  wnere  the  next  day  s  rood  was  to  come  trom.  lo  get  first  few 
enough  from  day  to  day  to  keep  soul  and  body  together  was 
their  constant  anxiety,  and  the  stimulus  to  unceasing  labor.  Their 
chief  sustenance  in  the  summer-time  was  fish  .and  clams,  with  some 
times  a  little  venison — very  little  it  must  have  been,  for  stalking  deer 
with  the  clumsy  musket  of  the  period,  could  but  be  wearisome  and 
unprofitable  hunting.  Those  who  went  out  by  turns  in  their  single 
boat  to  fish,  would  stay  away  five  or  six  days  rather  than  return 
empty-handed  to  be  received  with  gloom  and  disappointment  by 
their  hungry  fellows.  The  treasured  stores  were  eked  out  in  winter 
with  ground  nuts  and  such  wild  fowl  as  they  could  kill.  When  a  ship 
came  in  with  additions  to  their  number  the  scant  and  sorry  feast  of 


Site  of  First  Church  and  Governor  Bradford's  House 


412  THE   PILGRIMS   AT   PLYMOUTH.  [CHAP.  XV. 

welcome  they  spread  before  their  friends  was  a  lobster,  or  a  bit  of  fish 
without  bread,  and  a  cup  of  water.  To  deprive  an  Englishman  of 
that  period,  when  tea  and  coffee  were  unknown  in  Europe,  of  his  beer, 
was  to  reduce  him  to  a  condition  next  to  starvation  ;  but  the  want  of 
"  a  spoonful  of  beer,"  even  for  the  sick,  is  recorded  as  among  the 
deprivations  most  sorely  felt  in  the  first  year's  sufferings,  both  of 
Plymouth  and  Jamestown.  "  It  is  worthy  to  be  observed,"  wrote 
Bradford,  twenty  years  afterward,  in  allusion  to  the  sufferings  of 
the  early  times,  "  how  the  Lord  doth  chaing  times  and  things  ;  for 
what  is  now  more  plentiful  than  wine."  It  was  not  counted  as 
among  the  least  of  the  trials  which  these  first  colonists  had  to  endure, 
that  a  cup  of  fair  water  was  the  only  drink.  When  the  search  was 
made  along  the  shores  of  Plymouth  Bay  for  a  fitting  place  for  a  set 
tlement,  the  reason  given,  in  addition  to  the  lateness  of  the  season, 
for  the  hasty  decision  was  that :  "  We  could  not  now  take  time  for 
further  search  or  consideration,  our  victuals  being  much  spent,  espe 
cially  our  beer."  1  And  when,  a  few  years  later,  a  colony  came  over 
to  settle  at  Salem,  and  provisions  soon  became  scarce,  "  most  began 
to  repent  when  their  strong  Beere  and  full  cups  ran  as  small  as  water 
in  a  large  Land."2 

There  are  indications  of  other  troubles  in  these  early  years,  the 
cause  and  sometimes  the  character  of  which  are  not  always  clear. 
The  root  of  them  all,  however,  was  probably  in  the  determination  on 
the  part  of  some  of  the  London  adventurers  to  use  the  colony  for  their 
own  selfish  purposes.  Thus  when  John  Peirce,  in  whose  name, 
second  pa-  but  on  behalf  of  the  colony,  the  first  patent  from  the  Plym 
outh  Company  was  taken  out  in  1621,  saw  that  the  enter 
prise  promised  within  two  years  to  be  successful,  he  procured,  in 
1623,  another  patent  on  his  own  account,  under  which  the  Plymouth 
people  were  to  be  merely  his  tenants.  Fortunately  for  them  Peirce 
met  with  such  losses  in  sending  a  ship  to  America  that  he  was  willing 
to  part  with  this  grant ;  but  for  what  had  cost  him  only  <£50,  he  com 
pelled  the  company  to  pay  him  ,£500.  Nor  was  the  conflict  of  ma 
terial  interests  the  only  or  the  most  serious  one.  Among  the  ad 
venturers  in  London  some  were  Church  people,  and  the  jealousy  of 
sect,  while  harder  to  reconcile  than  merely  pecuniary  interests,  em 
bittered  and  intensified  all  other  differences.  That  the  pastor,  Rob 
inson,  and  more  of  their  friends  from  the  Church  at  Ley  den  did  not 
join  them  seems  to  have  been  because  there  was  a  determination 
among  some  of  the  managers  in  London  to  prevent  it.  There  was 
clearly  a  purpose  to  get  another  class  of  persons  than  Puritans  settled 

1  Mourt's  Relation. 

2  Johnson's  Wonder  Working  Providence. 


1623.]  LYFORD  AND    OLDHAM.  413 

at  Plymouth ;  and  while  it  seems  plain  that  those  of  the  Puritan  faith 
were  quite  ready,  so  far  as  it  was  possible  among  a  people  of  such 
strong  convictions  and  rigid  lives,  to  tolerate  those  who  did  not  agree 

O  O  '  O 

with  them,  there  are  indications  at  least  on  the  other  side,  of  a  purpose 
to  diminish  and  overcome  the  puritanic  element  of  the  colony,  and  to 
put  the  management  of  its  affairs  into  the  hands  of  those  who  had 
no  sympathy  with  it.  But  the  Puritans  were  strong  in  the  leader 
ship  of  such  men  as  Bradford,  Brewster,  and  Winslow,  who  were  as 
eminently  endowed  with  common  sense,  worldly  wisdom,  and  the  gov 
erning  faculty,  as  they  were  deservedly  esteemed  among  the  brethren 
for  their  soundness  in  the  faith. 

Winslow  was  sent  to  England  on  the  business  of  the  colony  in  the 
autumn  of  1623,  and  brought,  on  his  return  in  the  spring,  a  report  of 
these  differences.     There  came  with  him  one  John  Lyford,  a  clergy 
man,  who,  as  it  afterwards  appeared,  was  an  emissary  of  Arrival  ol 
the  discontented  faction  in  the  London  Council,  a  veritable  fr^mEng°rd 
wolf  in  sheep's  clothing  among  the  Plymouth  flock,  a  dis-   land' 
sembler,  mischief-maker,  and  spy.     "  The  preacher  we  have  sent," 
wrote  Robert  Cushman,  "  is  (we  hope)  an  honest,  plain  man,  though 

none  of  the  most  eminente  and  rare Mr.  Winslow  and  my  selfe 

gave  way  to  his  going,  to  give 

continte  to  some  hear,  and  we  ____--r^-  (  *     T 

/tf 


see  no  hurt,  but  only  his  great 

Charge        Of       Children."          The        /^~f      Signature  of  Edward  Winslow. 

charge  of  his  family,  which 
had  to  be  supported  from  the  public  store,  was  the  lightest  burden  he 
brought  them,  as  the  event  showed.  Full  of  protestations  of  humil 
ity,  of  admiration  for  the  Pilgrims,  of  being  a  devout  and  zealous 
convert  to  their  way  of  thinking  on  religious  subjects,  he  so  ingra 
tiated  himself  among  them,  that  he  was  soon  admitted  to  the  church, 
and  taken  by  the  governor  into  unreserved  confidence. 

There  was  in  the  colony  one  John  Oldham,  who  also  had  won  much 
good  repute  before  the  coming  of  Lyford  and  was  held  in  like  esteem. 
These  two  men  soon  drew  together  and  gathered  about  them  all  the 
discontented   spirits  of    the  colony,  proposing  apparently  to  subvert 
both  church  and  state.     A  movement  of  this  sort  could  not  be  carried 
on  long  in  a  community  of  less  than  two  hundred  persons, 
without  being  suspected.     Lyford  and  Oldham  were  watched,   Lyford  and 
and  when  it  was  found  among  other  things  that  Lyford  had 
prepared  more  letters  to  send  to  England  by  the  ship  in  which  he 
came  out  than  any  honest  purpose  would  seem  to  warrant,  Bradford 
felt  that  it  was  his  duty  as  chief  magistrate  and  to  avert  the  ruin 
that  such  a  conspiracy  threatened,  to  intercept  these  letters.     They 


414  THE   PILGRIMS   AT   PLYMOUTH.  [CHAP.  XV. 

were  found  to  contain  ample  evidence  against  both  the  suspected 
men. 

Lyford,  however,  was  not  arrested  till  he  openly  held  a  meeting  for 
public  worship  in  accordance  with  the  forms  and  rites  of  the  Epis 
copal  Church.  It  was  impossible  that  the  Pilgrims  should  see  the 
introduction  of  any  other  form  of  religious  observance  than  their  own 
among  them  without  a  good  deal  of  feeling,  and  that  alone  might,  in 
some  degree,  warp  their  judgment.  But  the  offence  of  Lyford  was 
evidently  not  so  much  that  he  had  held  such  a  meeting,  as  that  he 
should  have  done  so  without  consultation  with  the  brethren,  while  he 
had  all  the  while  professed  to  have  abandoned  the  Episcopal  Church, 
and  to  be  in  full  accord  with  a  people  who,  as  Bradford  said,  "  all  the 
world  knew  came  hither  to  enjoy  the  liberty  of  their  conscience  and 
the  free  use  of  God's  ordinances ;  and  for  that  end  had  ventured  their 
lives  and  passed  through  so  much  hardship  hitherto,  and  they  and 
their  friends  had  borne  the  charge  of  those  beginnings,  which  was  not 
small."  But  there  were  other  grievances,  though  this  may  have  been 
the  head  and  front  of  his  offending,  that  justified  the  course  pursued 
with  him  as  a  dangerous  member  of  society. 

Oldham  was  at  the  same  time  brought  to  trial,  but  not  till  he  had 
openly  disobeyed  and  defied  the  Captain  when  ordered  out  on  guard  ; 
had  called  him  a  "  beggarly  raskell,"  and  had  threatened  him  with  a 
knife.  When  arraigned  before  the  public  meeting  with  Lyford  to 
answer  for  his  conduct,  he  loudly  called,  though  he  called  in  vain, 
upon  all  who  were  discontented  and  on  whom  they  both  thought  they 
could  rely,  to  rally  around  him  in  open  mutiny.  The  result  of  the 
trial,  however,  was  that  Lyford  publicly  and  humbly  confessed  in  the 
church,  with  many  tears,  that  he  had  been  guilty  of  grievous  wrong, 
had  slandered  the  brethren,  and  plotted  against  their  rule  in  the 
colony,  and  that  in  his  pride,  vain-glory,  and  self-love,  he  had  hoped 
to  carry  all  against  them  by  violence  and  the  strong  hand. 

A  sentence  of  banishment  was  pronounced  upon  both,  to  take  place 
some  months  later.  This  clemency  was  misplaced,  for  Ly- 
and  con-  ford  wrote  again  secretly  to  England,  soon  after,  repeating  and 
maintaining  the  truth  of  all  the  charges  he  had  before  made, 
which  were  chiefly  intolerance  among  the  Pilgrims  of  all  religious 
opinions  and  forms  of  worship  but  their  own  ;  abuse  by  the  mag 
istrates  of  the  civil  power  to  the  injury  of  all  who  were  not  of  their 
way  of  thinking;  injustice  to  those  later  emigrants  who  had  no  in 
terest  in  the  joint-stock  company;  and  waste  of  the  public  property  — 
charges  which  were  all  categorically  met  and  denied. 

His  case  came  at  length,  on  this  second  letter,  before  a  public 
meeting  of  the  adventurers  in  London  for  consideration  and  decision, 


1623.J 


LYFORD  AND   OLDHAM. 


415 


where  Winslow,  who  meantime  was  on  another  visit  to  England,  not 
only  met  the  accusations  made  against  the  good  name  and  peace  of 
the  colony,  but  proved  by  trustworthy  witnesses  there  present,  that 
Lyford,  while  a  clergyman  in  Ireland,  had  been  guilty  of  seduction 
under  circumstances  of  unusual  baseness.  About  the  same  time  his 
wife  in  Plymouth,  "a  grave  matron  and  of  good  cariage,"  when  the 
sentence  of  banishment  was  about  to  be  enforced  against  her  hus 
band,  "  was  so  affected  with  his  doings  as  she  could  no  longer  con- 
ceaill  her  greefe  and  sorrow  of  minde."  She  laid  her  bur 
den  before  a  deacon  of  the  church  and  other  friends,  ac-  ment  of  Ly- 
knowledging  that  this  reverend  hypocrite  had  been  a  for- 
nicator  before  their  marriage  and  an  adulterer  since.  Such  develop 
ments  were  the  best  evidence  of  the  true  character  of  the  man,  and 


Expulsion  of  Oldham. 

that  the  prosecution  of  him  by  the  Puritans  was  on  behalf  of  social 
morality,  good  order,  and  peace  in  the  colony,  and  did  not  proceed 
from  religious  Bigotry. 

The  case  of  Oldham  was  less  complicated,  and  was  dealt  with  in  a 
more  summary  manner.     He  had  the  hardihood  to  return  again  to 
Plymouth   a  few  months   after  his  banishment.     A  coarse   Oldham 
and  open   brawler,  he  made  himself  so  offensive  to  all  good  ofCpiym-ut 
citizens   and   so   abused  the  forbearance  of  the  magistrates   outh- 
by  his  open  denunciations  and  loud-mouthed  defiance,  that  even  the 


416  THE   PILGRIMS   AT   PLYMOUTH.  [CHAP.  XV. 

limit  of  their  patience  was  at  length  reached.  "  They  committed 
him,"  says  Bradford,  "till  he  was  tamer,  and  then  apointed  a  gard  of 
musketers  which  he  was  to  pass  throw  and  every  one  was  ordered  to 
give  him  a  thump  on  the  brich,  with  the  but  end  of  his  musket,  and 
then  was  conveied  to  the  water  side,  wher  a  boat  was  ready  to  cary 
him  away.  Then  they  bid  him  goe  and  mende  his  raaners." 

There  is  not  much  in  the  characters  or  the  acts  of  these  men  to  dis 
tinguish  them  from  the  ordinary  and  trivial  incidents  which  necessa 
rily  mark  the  history  of  a  handful  of  people  struggling  in  the  wilder 
ness  to  retain  their  grasp  upon  existence,  while  laying  the  foundations 
of  what  may  become  a  commonwealth,  or  may  only  be  a  village.  But 
their  conduct  had  results  more  serious  than  were  involved  in  the  pun 
ishment  of  two  bad  men,  or  than  the  anxiety  they  gave  to  the  rulers 
of  the  colony,  or  the  scandal  they  brought  upon  it.  The  bringing 
of  Lyford's  case  before  the  London  meeting  was  the  culmination  of 
the  differences  and  difficulties  which  had  long  divided  the  company; 
differences  and  difficulties  which  had  prevented  Mr.  Robinson  and 
the  rest  of  his  flock  in  Leyden,  from  joining  those  in  America;  had 
kept  alive  that  spirit  of  persecution  which  the  Puritans  hoped  to 
escape  by  voluntary  exile  ;  and  had  so  seriously  interfered  with  the 
progress  and  prosperity  of  the  colony. 

That  Lyford  was  really  an  emissary  of  a  faction  whose  purpose  was 
to  take  the  colony  out  of  the  hands  of  the  Puritans  and  reduce  them 
Breaking  up  *o  the  condition  of  sufferance  —  if  even  that  should  be 
pinyein°m  granted  them  —  seemed  no  longer  doubtful.  His  conviction 
London.  before  the  world  as  a  man  of  detestable  character  who  had 
attempted  by  the  most  treacherous  means  to  carry  out  a  hostile  pur 
pose,  led  the  majority  of  the  London  adventurers,  not  to  drop  him,  but 
to  drop  the  colony.  They  virtually  made  common  cause  with  the  cul 
prit,  and  accepted  his  exposure  and  defeat  as  their  own.  The  Com 
pany  from  that  moment  came  to  an  end,  and  the  Plymouth  people 
were  left,  with  a  few  friends  in  England,  to  work  out  for  themselves 
their  own  success  or  their  own  failure  as  the  case  might  be. 

It  was  really  the  beginning  of  their  success.     Thrown  upon  their 

own  resources,  they  developed  new  energies.     Assuming  in  the  course 

of  the  next  year  the  entire  debts  and  responsibilities  of  the 

Independ-  111  i  111  •  •          i 

ence  of  the  Company,  lands,  houses,  cattle  and  other  domestic  animals 
were  equitably  divided,  and  the  people  from  dependent  colo 
nists  became  independent  citizens,  living  in  the  enjoyment  of  the 
fruits  of  their  own  labor,  and  under  laws  of  their  own  making.  The 
whole  trade  of  the  colony  was  put  for  a  limited  period  under  the 
sole  management  of  eight  of  the  principal  men,  who  undertook  in  re 
turn  —  and  in  due  time  discharged  the  obligation  —  to  liquidate  all 


1624.]  FISHING  STATION  AT  CAPE  ANN.  417 

debts,  including  that  to  the  old  Company  which  was  the  price  of  their 
freedom.  Their  friends  at  Leyden  were  enabled  in  time  to  join  them, 
though  the  Pastor  Robinson,  who  died  in  March,  1625,  was  never 
permitted  to  see  the  promised  land.  From  that  time  they  had  none 
to  rely  upon  but  themselves. 

When  Winslow  returned  from  England  in  the  spring  of  1624,  he 
brought  with  him  a  grant,  made  to  himself  and  Robert  Cushman  by 
Edward  Lord  Sheffield,  of  500  acres  of  land,  together  with 
30  acres  in  addition  for  each  actual  settler  for  a  mile  and  a  Ann  paap-" 
half  along  the  shore  of  Cape  Ann  Bay,  now  Gloucester. 
"  In  my  discovery  of  Virginia,"  says  Captain  John  Smith  with  char 
acteristic  audacity,  in  the  dedication  to  Prince  Charles  of  his  descrip 
tion  of  New  England  — "  in  my  discovery  of  Virginia,  I  presumed 
to  call  two  nameless  Headlands  after  my  Soveraign's  heirs,  Cape 
Henry  and  Cape  Charles."  He  neither  discovered  Virginia  nor 
named  its  capes,  but  to  Cape  Ann  he  did  give  a  name  which,  however, 
it  did  not  long  retain  —  calling  it  Cape  Tragabigzanda,  in  honor  of 
that  noble  Turkish  gentlewoman,  Charatza  Tragabigzanda,  whose  slave 
he  once  was,  by  right  of  purchase,  and  who  he  tells  us,  pined  for  love 
of  him.  But  Prince  Charles  ruthlessly  took  from  New  England  the 
perpetuation  of  the  memory  of  this  tender  romance  by  changing  the 
name  to  Cape  Ann  in  honor  of  his  mother,  Anne  of  Denmark.  Lord 
Sheffield's  right  to  that  portion  of  the  country  was  derived  partly  from 
purchase  and  partly  from  a  division  of  New  England  among  the  paten 
tees  of  the  Plymouth  Company,  which  division,  however,  was  never 
approved  by  the  king,  and  was  therefore  null  and  void.1 

Thither  the  ship  in  which  Winslow  came,  was  sent  to  establish  a 
fishing  station,  after  discharging  her  cargo,  an  important  part 
of  which  was  three  heifers  and  a  bull,  the  first  cattle  taken  cattle  at 
to  Plymouth.     But  they  made  a  poor  voyage,  says  Bradford, 
—  who  always  thought  that  fishing  was  a  "  thing  fatal  "  to  the  col 
ony  —  partly  because  of  the  lateness  of  the  season,  and  partly  because 
the  master  of  the  ship  was  "  a  drunken  beast,  and  did  nothing  (in  a 
maner)  but  drink  and  gusle,  and  consume  away  the  time  and  his 
victails." 

The  undertaking  was  on  the  whole,  disastrous,  though  something 
was  made  by  trade  in  peltries.  The  beaver  was  to  these  first  people  of 
Massachusetts  a  better  friend  than  the  cod,  though  the  cod  hangs  to 
this  day  in  the  State  House  at  Boston  as  the  emblem  of  its  prosperity, 
while  only  here  and  there  in  the  country  lingers  some  dim  tradition 
of  the  beaver,  where  an  embankment  across  some  secluded  meadow 
suggests  that  a  dam  may  once  have  been  there.  The  Pilgrims,  how- 

1  Smith's  General  Historie  ;  The  Landing  at  Cape  Anne,  by  J.  Wingate  Thornton. 


418 


THE   PILGRIMS   AT   PLYMOUTH. 


[CHAP.  XV. 


ever,  built  a  large  frame  house  and  put  up  a  stage  for  drying  fish  as 
the  nucleus  of  a  settlement.  But  here  the  Lyford  trouble  was  to 
break  out  again  and  plague  them. 

The  first  result  of  the  dissolution  of  the  Company  in  London  which 
followed  his  exposure  was  the  sending  out  of  a  ship  by  some 
of  the  adventurers  who  had  upheld  Lyford,  upon  a  voyage 
which  could  hardly  fail  to  come  into  competition  with  their 
late  associates.  The  vessel,  under  the  command  of  one  Hewes,  arrived 
early  in  the  season  and  finding  this  place  at  Cape  Ann  unoccupied,  he 


The  fishing 
station  at 
Cape  Ann. 


took  possession  of  the 
building  and  fishing-stage 
which  the  Plymouth  peo 
ple  had  built  for  their  own 
convenience.  The  news 
of  this  proceeding  soon 
reached  Plymouth,  and 
Captain  Standish  was  sent 
with  a  company  to  expel 
the  intruders.  A  surrender  was  demanded ;  Hewes  piled  up  a  barri 
cade  of  hogsheads  at  the  stage-head,  and  secure  behind  these  with  his 
ship  in  the  rear,  as  his  base  of  operations,  defied  the  Captain.  High 
words  passed  and  might  have  ended  in  bloodshed,  for  as  "a  little 
chimney  is  soon  fired,  so  was  the  Plymouth  captain,  a  man  of  very 
little  stature,  yet  of  a  very  hot  and  angry  temper."  1  But  the  fortifi- 
1  Hubbard's  History  of  New  England. 


Barricade  at  Cape  Ann. 


1624.]  THE   CAPE   ANN   COLONY.  419 

cation  was  one  not  to  be  easily  carried,  and  an  attack  from  the  open 
country  could  only  be  made  at  the  greatest  disadvantage. 

There  happened  to  be  present,  however,  Captain  William  Peirce  in 
a  ship  from  Plymouth,  and  one  Roger  Conant  of  Nantasket,  and  at 
their  intercession  the  anger  of  Standish  was  appeased.  He  was,  more 
over,  too  good  a  soldier  not  to  see  that  an  assault  would  be  hopeless ; 
so  a  compromise  was  made,  the  fishermen  promising  to  help  the  Plym 
outh  people  in  building  another  stage.  The  house  seems  to  have  re 
mained  in  possession  of  its  rightful  owners,  for  a  salt-maker  was  sent 
from  Plymouth  to  put  up  pans  for  salt-boiling.  But  by  his  careless 
ness,  in  the  course  of  the  summer,  house  and  pans  were  destroyed  by 
fire,  "and  this,"  says  Governor  Bradford,  "was  the  end  of  that 
chargable  bussines." 

This  Roger  Conant,  who  helped  to  assuage  the  hot  arid  angry  temper 
of  the  Plymouth  captain,  was  an  early  member  of  that  colony ;  but 
being   a  churchman,   the  rigid   life   of  the  Separatists   was 
probably  distasteful  to  him,  and  he  removed  to  Nantasket.  nantof° 
At  Nantasket  —  now  the  little  hamlet  of  Hull,  though  the 
old  Indian  name  happily  still  clings  to  it,  snugly  nestling  just  within 
Boston  harbor,  in  a  valley  between  two  great  round  hills,  out  of  sight, 
though  not  out  of  sound  of  the  surf  which  the  Atlantic  rolls  up  upon 
the   long    stretch   of   Nan 
tasket    beach    and    dashes 
against   the   ledges  of  Co- 
hasset  —  in    or    near   this 
lovely   nook,    Standish,   on 
his  first  visit  to  Boston  har 
bor,  had  put  up  a  house.1 
Of  this,  probably  a  year  or  standish's  ••  Pot  and  Flatter." 

two  later,  Conant  took  pos 
session,  and  there  he,  Lyford,  and  Oldham  found  refuge  when  the 
Puritans  would  no  longer  tolerate  the  latter. 

It  is  not  quite  certain  whether  Conant  was  at  this  time  residing  at 
Cape  Ann,  or  whether  he  was  there  only  to  be  present  at 
the  apprehended  struggle  between  the  Plymouth  men  and  capeAnn 
the  crew  of  Hewes's  vessel,  a  report  of  which  might  easily 
have  reached  him  at  Nantasket,  only  a  few  miles  distant.     At  Cape 
Ann,   at  any  rate,  was   already  planted  that  first  colony  of  which 
Conant  was  sometime  in  charge,  and  which  was  the  seed  from  which 
sprung  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay. 

The  merchants  of  the  west  of  England  had  for  several  years  sent 

1  "  Something  like  a  habitation  was  put  up  at  Nantasket,"  says  Hubbard  (General  His 
tory  of  New  England),  with  reference  to  future  traffic  with  Indians. 


420  THE   PILGRIMS   AT  PLYMOUTH.  [CHAP.  XV. 

vessels  to  fish  along  the  coast  of  New  England,1  and  in  1623  it  was 
proposed,  as  a  saving  of  time  and  expense,  that  colonizing  and  fishing 
should  be  united.  The  extra  men  whom  it  was  necessary  to  take  on 
these  voyages  to  catch  and  to  cure  the  fish,  were  to  be  left  somewhere 
on  the  coast  when  the  fishing  season  was  over  and  the  vessel  ready  to 
go  home,  to  employ  themselves  in  building,  planting,  and  hunting,  for 
the  rest  of  the  year  till  they  were  needed  again  as  fishermen.  The 
plan,  indeed,  did  not  answer,  for,  —  as  Bradford  saw  so  plainly  and  as 
the  west  country  merchants  proved  to  their  great  loss,  —  the  prelimi 
nary  and  continuous  work  necessary  in  the  planting  of  a  colony  was 
incompatible  with  the  business  of  fishing.  It  was  not  till  a  later 
period  that  so  many  of  the  thrifty  people  of  Massachusetts,  small 
farmers,  or  shoemakers,  or  other  handi-craftsmen,  in  the  autumn  and 
winter,  found  that  they  could  profitably  and  healthfully  spend  the 
spring  and  summer  months  in  fishing  on  the  Grand  Banks,  or  along 
the  coast  for  cod  and  mackerel,  and  never  go  to  sea  at  any  other 
time,  or  for  any  other  purpose. 

A  company,  however,  was  formed  in  1623  at  Dorchester,  England, 
The  Dor-  °^  wn-ich  the  Rev.  John  White,  the  minister  of  that  place, 
CanSterC°m  was  ^e  moving  spirit,  to  combine  planting  with  fishing. 
One  vessel  was  sent  out  that  year  on  such  a  voyage,  and, 
when  she  was  ready  to  return,  fourteen  of  her  crew  were  left,  with 
provisions  for  their  support,  at  Cape  Ann  to  begin  a  colony.  The 
next  spring  two  ships  with  more  men  were  sent ;  the  year  after,  three. 
To  the  people  were  added  cattle  in  1625  ;  but  the  experiment,  never 
theless,  was  unsuccessful.  The  fishing  proved  unprofitable  from  sev 
eral  causes  ;  the  landsmen  were  ill-chosen  and  ill-governed  ;  the  colony 
fell  into  disorder,  and  most  of  the  people  were  sent  back  to  England, 
probably  in  1626.2  A  few  men  remained  in  charge  of  cattle  sent  out 
the  year  before.  Of  these,  Conant  was  chief,  having  been  previously 
appointed  —  Hubbard  says  —  the  overseer  or  governor.3 

1  In  1620  there  were  seven  or  eight  fishing-vessels  sent  out  from  that  part  of  England 
and  four  years  later  their  number  was  increased  to  fifty. 

2  The  Planters'  Plea.    By  Rev.  John  White.     Hubbard's  General  History  of  New  Eng 
land. 

3  There  is  much  incertitude  about  the  history  of  this  Cape  Ann  Colony,  under  the  Dor 
chester  Company.     White,  in  The  Planters'  Plea,  gives  the  date  of  its  settlement  as  1623  ; 
Hubbard  in  the  General  History  says,  "  about  1624."     White  does  not  mention  Conant,  but 
Hubbard   says  that  John  Tylly  and  Thomas  Gardner,  were  overseers  "  at  least  for  one 
year's  time,  at  the  end  of  which,"  White  and  his  associates  "  pitched  upon  him,  the  said 
Conant,  for  the  managing  and  government  of  all  their  affairs  at  Cape  Ann."     This  would 
be  in  1625,  when  according  to  White,  after  a  "  two  years  and  a  half"  experiment,  the  Com 
pany  abandoned  the  attempt,  and  a  few  only  of  the  most  honest  and  industrious  remained 
to  take  charge  of  the  cattle.     But  Hubbard  also  says,  that  "  together  with  him,"  — Conant 
—  the  Company  invited  Lyford,  "to  be  the  minister  of  the  place,"  and  Oldham,  "to  trade 
for  them  with  the  Indians,"  —  which  invitation  Lyford  accepted,  but  Oldham  declined  — 


1626.]  ENDICOTT   AT   NAUMKEAG.  421 

The  same  year,  Conant,  not  liking  the  place  at  Cape  Ann,  moved 
to  Naumkeag,  or  Nahumkeik,  —  now  Salem.1  Mr.  White  Removai  to 
and  some  of  his  associates,  encouraged  by  the  fact  that  this  Naumkeag- 
little  remainder  of  their  colony  still  clung  together,  sent  out  more 
cattle,  and  moved  anew  in  England  to  engage  others  in  their  enter 
prise.  Some  gentlemen  in  London  added  to  these  cattle,  and  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  emigrants  also  went  out  in  the  course  of  the 
year,  to  join  Conant  and  his  few  companions. 

The  "  action  "  had  fallen,  at  last,  into  good  hands.     Some  gentle 
men  of  London  took  hold  of  it  with  great  energy,  moved  thereto  by 

all  three  at  that  time  residing  at  Nantasket ;  and  elsewhere  he  says,  that  these  men,  after 
leaving  Plymouth,  found  refuge  at  Nantasket  for  themselves  and  their  families,  "for  the 

space  of  a  year  and  a  few  months,  till  a  door  was  opened  for  them  at  Cape  Ann 

about  the  year  1625."  But  Lyford  and  Oldham  were  not  tried  at  Plymouth  till  the  sum 
mer  of  1624;  Lyford's  banishment  was  not  to  take  place  till  six  months  afterward,  and 
Oldham's  family  had  permission  to  remain  in  Plymouth  the  ensuing  winter.  Neither  Ly 
ford  nor  Oldham's  family,  therefore,  went  to  Nantasket  till  1625,  and  if  they  remained  there 
a  year  and  some  months,  could  not  have  gone  to  Cape  Ann  till  1626.  Bradford,  moreover, 
though  he  does  not  mention  Conant,  says  that  Lyford  went  from  Nantasket  to  Naumkeag, 
—  Salem.  The  difficulty  is.  to  reconcile  Hubbard  with  himself;  with  the  fixed  date  of  the 
Lyford  trouble  at  Plymouth ;  and  with  White's  statement  as  to  the  beginning  and  duration 
of  the  colony.  This  difficulty  is  further  complicated  by  Captain  Smith,  in  his  General  His 
tory,  published  in  1624,  where  he  says,  "  and  by  Cape  Ann  there  is  a  plantation,  a  begin 
ning  by  the  Dorchester  men,  which  they  hold  of  those  of  New  Plymouth,  who  also  by  them 
have  set  up  a  fishing  worke."  If  the  Dorchester  men  held  of  New  Plymouth,  it  must  have 
been  under  the  Sheffield  patent,  and  such  "  beginning  "  of  their  plantation  would  necessa 
rily  be  in  1624,  and  not  in  1623;  for  the  Sheffield  patent  is  dated  January  1st,  1624,  N.  S. — 
1623,  O.  S.  —  and  the  Plymouth  "fishing  work"  we  know  was  set  up  in  the  spring  of  1624. 
Hubbard  is  supposed  to  have  received  his  information  directly  from  Conant,  who  lived  in 
Salem  till  1680,  but  as  his  statement  about  Lyford  is  manifestly  incorrect,  he  is  quite  likely 
to  be  so  in  other  particulars  as  to  dates.  Smith  could  have  had  only  hearsay  information  ; 
the  assertions  of  both,  therefore,  cannot  weigh  against  the  peculiarly  clear  account  of 
White,  in  the  Planters'  Plea.  If  Conant  left  Plymouth,  as  Hubbard  says,  with  Lyford  — 
and  Conant's  memory  on  such  a  point  would  probably  be  accurate  ;  —  if  they  went  first  to 
Nantasket,  and  lived  there  even  a  much  shorter  time  than  a  year  and  a  few  months,  they 
may  not  have  gone  to  Cape  Ann  till  late  in  1625,  Conant's  "governorship  "  beginning  the 
next  spring,  or  the  winter  of  1625-26,  when  the  colony  was  abandoned  by  all  but  himself 
and  a  few  companions,  and  he  took  charge  of  the  cattle.  It  seems,  indeed,  most  likely  that 
this  act  of  Conant's  first  commended  him  to  the  favorable  attention  of  Mr.  White,  who 
was  glad  to  hear  of  so  trustworthy  a  man  on  the  spot,  and,  not  being  willing  to  give  up  the 
project,  sent  more  cattle  to  his  care.  Meanwhile,  Conant  had  removed  to  Naumkeag.  He 
could  hardly  be  called  a  governor,  even  as  governors  went  in  those  times.  The  only 
authority  for  it  is  Hubbard,  who  evidently  used  the  term  indifferently  and  interchange 
ably  with  overseer  or  agent. 

1  "  Of  which  place  I  have  somewhere  met  with  an  odd  observation,  that  the  name  of  it 
was  rather  Hebrew,  than  Indian  ;  for  Cin2.  Nahum,  signifies  comfort,  &  pin,  signifies  an 
haven ;  &  our  English  not  only  found  it  an  Haven  of  Comfort,  but  happened  also  to  put  an 
Hebrew  name  upon  it,  for  they  called  it  Salem,  for  the  peace  which  they  had  &  hoped  in 
it;  &  so  it  is  called  unto  this  day."  Mather's  Magnolia,  vol.  i.,  chap.  iv. 

"  It  fals  out  that  the  name  of  the  place,  which  our  late  Colony  hath  chosen  for  their  seat, 
proves  to  be  perfect  Hebrew  being  called  Nahum  Keike,  by  interpretation,  The  bosome  of 
consolation."  White's  Planters'  Plea,  chap.  ii. 


422  THE   PILGRIMS   AT   PLYMOUTH.  [CHAP.  XV. 

the  promise  of  pecuniary  success  and  the  hope  of  making  an  asylum 
for  those  who,  though  not  such  rigid  Separatists  as  the  New  Plym 
outh  people,  were  nevertheless  Non-conformists,  anxious  to  escape  the 
tyranny  of  the  prelates  and  from  a  church  which  they  believed  was  on 
the  high  road  to  Rome.  Fit  men  for  the  enterprise  were  sought  for, 
and  "  among  others  they  lighted  at  last  on  master  Endicott,  a  man 
well  knowne  to  divers  persons  of  good  note."  In  March,  a  patent1 
was  procured  from  the  New  England  Company  ;  it  granted  all  that 
tract  of  country  from  three  miles  south  of  the  Charles  River,  to  three 
miles  north  of  the  Merrimack,  and  under  this  Endicott  was  sent  out 
as  governor  with  a  few  colonists,  who  arrived  at  Naumkeag  in  Sep 
tember,  1628. 

Endicott's  people  and  those  already  at  Naumkeag,  numbered  alto- 
Endicotfs  gether  on  his  arrival,  fifty  or  sixty  only.  A  year  later, 
arrival.  when  the  Rev.  Francis  Higginson  joined  them  with  two 
hundred  more,  he  found  there  one  hundred.  How  in  the  mean  time 
had  the  number  doubled  ?  History  prides  itself  on  exactness,  and 
undertakes  to  say  precisely  when  and  how  events  occurred,  how  many 
men  were  at  a  given  time  in  a  given  place,  and  what  they  did.  But 
much  is,  and  must  be  taken  upon  conjecture  and  upon  trust,  in  this 
case,  and  the  reality  may,  after  all,  have  differed  much  from  the 
guesses  transmitted  from  book  to  book,  and  from  century  to  century. 
How  many  men  may  have  scattered  themselves  along  the  shores  of 

Massachusetts  Bay  —  indeed  all  along 
the  whole  coast  of  New  England  —  from 
1620  to  1630,  is  altogether  uncertain. 
There  were  isolated  "  squatters,"  no 
doubt,  in  various  places  —  temporary 
settlements  soon  forgotten  and  soon 
abandoned,  or  absorbed  in  permanent 
colonies  afterward  established  with  set 
tled  forms  of  government.  Some  vaga 
bonds  came  then,  as  so  many  have  come 
since,  to  the  New  World,  to  mingle  with 
and  add  to  the  more  staid  and  sober 

Spinning  Wheel. 

population.      Ihere  was  more  than  one 

place  along  the  shores  of  the  Bay,  whence  men  may  have  gone  to 
Endicott's  colony  and  submitted  to  law  and  the  restraints  of  civil 
society,  for  the  sake  of  its  advantages ;  men  who  gladly  surrendered 
the  attractions  and  the  freedom  of  a  half  savage  life,  to  be  again 
among  houses  where  women  in  civilized  garments  were  busy  about 

1  The  patentees  were  Sir  Henry  Roswell,  Sir  John  Young,  Thomas  Southcote,  John 
Humphrey,  John  Eudicott,  and  Simon  Whitcomb. 


1628.]  MORTON  OF  MERRY  MOUNT.  423 

their  household  duties,  where  the  pleasant  whir  of  the  spinning-wheel 
filled  the  air,  where  busy  farmers  sowed  or  reaped,  where  horses  were 
driven  a-field,  and  kine  gathered  into  barn-yards.  The  sights  and 
sounds  of  rural  and  domestic  life,  appealing  to  so  many  memories  of 
early  homes  across  the  sea,  in  green  and  merry  England,  which  they 
would  never  see  again,  must  needs  have  been  an  irresistible  attraction 
to  many  of  these  solitary  adventurers,  weary,  at  last,  of  the  silence  of 
the  wilderness  and  the  companionship  of  savages.  Little  neighbor 
hoods  that  had  been  drawn  together  for  mutual  support  and  defence, 
would  often  melt  away  into  large  companies  which  came  with  the  ad 
vantages  of  numbers  and  of  wealth.  For  of  these  smaller  plantations, 
it  was  said,  "  they  were  like  the  habitations  of  the  foolish,  as  it  is  in 
Job,  cursed  before  they  had  taken  root." 

Nantasket  was  a  place  of  refuge  for  Conant,  Lyford,  and  Oldham. 
The  rough  house  which  Standish  put  up  there  before  Plym-  Scattered 
outh  was  a  year  old,  was  open  to  all  comers,  —  like  the  aionHhe*8 
"  Humane  Houses  "  of  the  present  day  scattered  along  the  coast- 
coast,  places  of  entertainment  for  shipwrecked  men  —  and  perhaps  had 
often  sheltered  some  outcasts  whom  the  rigid  righteousness  of  the 
Puritans  would  not  tolerate.  Thompson's  Island,  in  Boston  Harbor, 
so  called  to  this  day,  was  granted  early  to  David  Thompson,  whom 
we  know  of  as  living  at  one  time  at  Piscataway  ;  and  there  are  trust 
worthy  intimations  that  he  and  others  were  living  on  the  island  at 
one  time  and  another.  When  Gorges's  colony  was  broken  up  at 
Wessagusset,  some  few  remained  behind,  and  either  they  or  others 
were  still  on  that  river  some  years  later.  William  Blaxton  lived 
where  Boston  now  stands.  Maverick  was  on  Noddle's  Island  in  Bos 
ton  Harbor.  At  Mount  Wollaston,  a  colony  was  planted  in  1625, 
which  may  have  become  so  attractive  to  all  indolent  and  shiftless 
vagrants,  as  to  be  a  nursery  of  vagabonds,  and  an  asylum  to  discon 
tented  fishermen  and  sailors  who  ran  away  from  their  ships. 

Mount  Wollaston  —  still  bearing  the  same  name  —  is  in  the  present 
town  of  Quincy,  about  five  miles  south  of  Boston,  and  was  Mount  Wol. 
so  named  from  one  Captain  Wollaston,  who  came  out  from  ^o^asand 
England  in  1625,  with  thirty  others,  the  larger  part  of  Morton- 
whom  were  persons  bound  to  service.  These  were  not  profitable  emi 
grants  to  take  to  New  England,  and  Captain  Wollaston  soon  carried 
some  of  his  servants  to  a  better  market  in  Virginia.  Having  sold  the 
first  importation,  he  wrote  to  his  partner  to  come  on  with  more,  and 
to  leave  a  Mr.  Fitchter  in  charge  of  the  colony  at  Mount  Wollaston  till 
further  orders.  Among  the  colonists  was  one  Thomas  Morton,  by 
profession  a  lawyer,  but  by  choice  a  roving  and  reckless  adventurer, 
impatient  of  any  steady  labor  and  of  all  serious  duties,  given  to 


424  THE   PILGRIMS   AT   PLYMOUTH.  [CHAP.  XV. 

drinking,  fond  of  public  sports,  deriding  always  the  sobriety  of  the 
Puritans  and  the  severity  of  their  lives  — just  the  jolly  vagabond  to 
lead  other  vagabonds  into  any  mischief.  "  In  the  month  of  June, 
Anno  Salutis,  1622,"  he  says,  "  it  was  my  good  chance  to  arrive  in 
the  parts  of  New  England."  He  must,  in  that  case,  have  been  at 
Plymouth,  where  he  could  have  found  no  more  congenial  companions 
— for  he,  too,  professed  to  be  a  good  church-man  —  than  among  those 
whose  scrupulous  consciences  forbade  them  to  chop  wood  on  Christmas 
day,  but  permitted  them  to  play  at  bowls  ;  and  he  may  have  gone  to 
Wessagusset  that  year  with  Weston's  people,  for  no  brain  of  that 
company  would  have  been  more  likely  to  conceive  that  remarkable 
"  Embrion  "  —  his  own  narrative  is  the  sole  authority  for  its  birth  — 
which  suggested  the  vicarious  hanging  of  an  old,  sickly,  and  useless 
member  of  the  community,  in  place  of  a  young  and  lusty  culprit. 

At  any  rate,  this  troublesome  adventurer  was  at  Mount  Wollaston ; 
Mare  Mount  he  named  it,  which  the  Puritans,  ignorantly  or  iron 
ically,  changed  to  Merry  Mount,  and  Endicott  altered  again  to  Mount 
Dagon.  And  here,  when  Fitchter  was  left  in  command,  he  made  a 
characteristic  proposal,  when  his  commander  happened  to  be  out  of  the 
way.  He  told  his  companions  that  as  some  of  their  company  had 
already  been  taken  to  Virginia  and  sold  for  their  terms  of  service,  so 
would  the  rest  be  when  Wollaston  was  next  heard  from.  But  if  they 
chose,  he  said,  to  depose  Fitchter  and  banish  him  from  the  colony,  he 
—  Morton  —  and  they  would  henceforth  live  together  as  copartners 
and  equals,  and  they  be  released  from  service  altogether.  He  hardly 
needed  to  have  made  the  crew  about  him  drunk  —  as  it  is  intimated 
he  did  —  to  secure  the  acceptance  of  this  tempting  proposal.  Fitchter 
was  deposed  and  driven  forth,  and  thenceforward  not  liberty  only,  but 
license  held  high  revel  at  Mount  Wollaston. 

Upon  the  top  of  the  hill  was  set  up,  on  May-day,  a  May-pole,  eighty 
The  May-  ^ee^  high,  visible  for  miles  around,  "a  faire  sea-mark  e  for 
lienf  directions,"  says  Morton,  "how  to  finde  out  the  way  to  mine 
Mount.  Hogt  of  Ma-re  Mount."  A  pair  of  buck-horns  adorned  the 
top ;  a  poem  of  Morton's  own  composing  was  nailed  at  a  convenient 
height  to  be  read  of  all  comers,  few  of  whom  could  read  and  fewer 
still  could  understand  any  more  of  its  labored  enigma  than  that  Cith- 
area  pointed  to  land  at  last :  — 

"  With  proclamation  that  the  first  of  May, 
At  Ma-re  Mount  shall  be  kept  hollyday." 

A  barrel  of  beer  was  broached  upon  the  green,  and  bottles  of  stronger 
drink  provided  for  those  who  wanted  it ;  all  the  drums,  guns,  and  pis 
tols  that  the  settlement  possessed  were  called  into  use  for  the  noise 


1625.] 


MORTON   OF  MERRY  MOUNT. 


425 


indispensable  to  a  public  rejoicing ;  roaring  a  song  of  Morton's  in 
praise  of  drink  and  "  Indian  lasses  in  beaver  coats,"  the  hilarious  crew 
danced  about  the  May-pole,  with  Indian  women  for  partners  in  the 
absence  of  ladies  with  more  clothes  on. 

The  sober  Puritans  would  have  been  shocked  by  such  festivities, 

even  had  they  been  free  from  the 
immoralities  of  excessive  drinking, 
of  the  evil  example  and  opportu 
nity  thus  given  to  the  Indians,  and 
of  the  debauching  of  their  women. 
But  a  stronger  feeling  than  disgust 
and  disapprobation  was  aroused 
when  Morton's  people,  in  their  trade 
for  beaver  skins,  —  on  which  they 
mainly  depended  for  their  subsist 
ence,  —  sold  arms  and  ammunition 
to  the  Indians,  taught  them  their 
use,  and  employed  them  as  hunters. 
The  safety  of  every  present  and 


Festivities  at   Merry   Mount. 

future  colony  was  put  in  jeopardy  if  the  savages  were  to  have  such 
means  of  mischief.  There  could  no  longer  be  a  silent  submission  to 
these  dangerous  proceedings  at  Mount  Wollaston.  Morton  was  deaf 
to  remonstrance,  and  other  remedies  had  to  be  resorted  to  by  the  com- 


426  THE   PILGRIMS   AT   PLYMOUTH.  [CHAP.  XV. 

mon  consent  of  those  at  Plymouth  and  others  living  at  different  places 
about  the  bay  and  on  the  Piscataqua  River.  Captain  Standisb  — 
Captain  Shrimp,  Morton  calls  him  in  his  "  New  Canaan,"  where  he 
gives  ludicrous  names  to  all  who  condemned  his  conduct — was  sure  to 
come  to  the  front  in  such  an  emergency,  and  he,  in  command  of  a  few 
men,  was  accordingly  sent  to  Mount  Wollaston,  by  common  consent, 
to  arrest  the  offender.  Morton  says  they  found  him  at  Wessagusset, 
where,  it  seems,  there  still  remained  a  small  colony.  They  took  him, 
he  declares,  by  surprise  ;  but  he  warily  permitted  them  to  eat  and 
drink  to  satiety  while  he  was  carefully  abstemious ;  when  they,  over 
come  by  their  indulgence,  slept,  he,  vigilant  and  wide-awake,  escaped 
by  night  to  his  own  stronghold  three  miles  distant. 

*/  O 

Thither  Standish  and  his  men  followed  him.  Bradford  in  his  "  His- 
Expedition  tory,"  savs  nothing  of  Wessagusset,  but  his  and  Morton's  nar- 
toarresdtish  Dative  agree  that  at  Mount  Wollaston  Morton  closed  his 
Morton.  doors  and  prepared  to  receive  the  assailants.  Means  for  de 
fence  were  ample.  There  were  four  men  in  a  sort  of  log  fortress  with 
loop-holes ;  on  a  table  they  laid  out  three  pounds  of  well-dried  pow 
der,  four  guns,  and  three  hundred  bullets,  and  then  they  fortified 
themselves  with  "  good  aqua  solis."  The  enemy  were  only  nine  strong, 
and  the  approach  to  the  building  was  without  cover.  Standish  and 
his  men  advanced  steadily  and  in  good  order,  "  coming  within  danger," 
says  Morton,  "  like  a  flocke  of  wild  geese,  as  if  they  had  bin  tayled 
one  to  another  as  colts  to  be  sold  at  a  faire,"  and  much  blood  would 
have  flowed  "  if  mine  Host  (Morton)  should  have  played  upon  them 
out  at  his  ports  holes."  But  he  chose  not  to  play  upon  them.  The 
"  sonne  of  a  souldier "  contented  himself  with  boasting  that  had  he 
only  had  more  men  he  "  would  have  given  Captaine  Shrimpe  (a  quon 
dam  Drummer)  such  a  wellcome,  as  would  have  made  him  wish  for  a 
Drume  as  bigg  as  Diogenes'  tubb  that  he  might  have  crept  into  it  out 
of  sight."  He  nevertheless  surrendered  without  firing  a  shot.  The 
only  blood  shed  was  from  the  nose  of  one  of  the  defenders,  who,  from 
too  much  u  aqua  solis,"  stumbled  against  the  sword  of  one  of  Stan- 
dish's  men.  The  son  of  a  soldier  seems  to  have  been  a  coward  as  well 
as  a  braggart. 

After  this  almost  bloodless  victory,  Morton  was  taken  to  Plymouth 
Morton  sent  an(i  sent  thence  to  England  in  the  custody  of  John  Oldham, 
•  England.  wno^  repenting  of  his  former  misdeeds,  had  been  taken  again 
into  favor.  For  the  time  Morton  escaped  further  punishment,  and 
was  permitted  to  return  again  to  New  England  to  plague  the  Puritans 
for  years  to  come.  He  afterward  fell  into  the  hands,  however,  of 
Endicott  —  whom  he  nicknamed  Captain  Littleworth  —  who  not  only 
sent  him  a  second  time  to  England,  but,  before  he  went,  set  him  in 


1630.]  CHARTER   OF   1630.  427 

the  stocks,  and  confiscated  his  goods  at  Mount  Wollaston.     He  had 
previously  burnt  his  house,  and  cut  down  the  Maypole.1 

Meanwhile,  during  all  these  later  years  of  the  first  decade  of  the 
Plymouth  Colony,  "•  it  pleased  the  Lord  to  give  the  plantation  peace 
and  health  and  contented  minds."  The  Dutch  of  New  Netherland 
sent  pompous  letters  addressed  "  to  the  noble,  worshipful,  wise,  and 
prudent  Lords,  the  Governor  and  Councillors  residing  in  New  Plym 
outh  "  —  "over  high  titles,"  said  Bradford  in  his  reply,  "more  than 
belongs  to  us,  or  is  meete  for  us  to  receive  ; "  and  an  ambassador  was 
sent  —  the  secretary  Rasierres —  "  with  a  noyse  of  trumpeters  and  some 
other  attendants."  But  good  fellowship  was  thereby  estab 
lished  between  the  two  colonies,  and  this  was  followed  by  trade  and 
profitable  trade,  especially  in  wampum.  This  native  cur 
rency  the  Indians  of  the  East  soon  learned  to  value,  though,  as  its 
manufacture  by  the  tribes  of  Long  Island  from  the  shells  of  the  qua- 
harig  and  the  periwinkle  was  practically  unlimited,  it  soon  produced 
such  an  inflation  of  values  that,  from  being  rated  at  first  by  the  penny 
worth,  it  came  at  last  to  be  sold  by  the  fathom,  and  then  to  be  pro 
hibited  altogether  by  colonial  law. 

But  as  the  Pilgrims  increased  their  trade,  and  grew  in  prosperity, 
they  enlarged  their  borders.  In  1628  they  procured  from  the  Plym 
outh  Company  a  patent  for  lands  on  the  Kennebec,  and  a  settlement 
near  the  present  town  of  Augusta,  Maine,  became  a  val-  charterof 
uable  dependency.  In  1630  a  new  patent  was  granted  to  1630- 
William  Bradford  and  his  associates,  which,  for  the  first  time,  defined 
the  limits  of  the  New  Plymouth  Colony,  making  its  eastern  boun 
dary  the  ocean,  from  Cohasset  River  to  Narragansett  River ;  its 
western,  a  line  drawn  from  the  mouths  of  these  rivers  and  meeting 
at  the  extreme  western  border  of  the  Indian  country,  known  as  the 
Pokanoket  country,  which  was  the  southeastern  portion  of  the  State 
of  Massachusetts.  And  this  patent  also  approved  the  grant  on  the 
Kennebec,  defining  it  to  be  fifteen  miles  on  each  bank  of  that  river. 

The  colony,  however,  never  procured  the  royal  signature  to  this  char 
ter  from  the  Plymouth  Company.  Their  powers  of  government  were 
derived  from  the  compact  signed  in  the  cabin  of  the  Mayflower,  the 
day  after  her  arrival  in  Cape  Cod  Harbor,  and  from  the  discipline  of 
the  church.  In  the  censure  of  the  brethren,  and  the  authority  drawn 
from  the  general  assembly  of  the  people,  the  law  found  sufficient  and 

i  Morton  was  accused  of  cruelty  to  the  Indians  and  other  crimes,  and  was  arrested  by 
Endicott  on  a  writ  from  England.  He  continued  his  active  hostility  to  the  Puritans  till  his 
death  in  1645  or  1646,  having  meanwhile  been  punished  with  a  year's  imprisonment  in  Bos 
ton  for  his  libellous  book,  The  New  English  Canaan,  in  which  he  had  attacked,  with  a  good 
deal  of  scurrilous  humor,  all  the  principal  men  of  the  colonies. 


428 


THE   PILGRIMS   AT   PLYMOUTH. 


[CHAP.  XV. 


unquestioned  authority.1  The  exigencies  of  their  own  condition,  the 
maintenance  of  social  order  and  of  mutual  rights,  the  suggestions 
of  common  sense,  and  the  dictates  of  their  own  consciences,  made  the 

body  of  the  law.  Not  till  the  first  serious  crime  was  com- 
ofXjohn°n  mitted  among  them  —  the  murder  of  a  fellow-colonist  by  one 

John  Billington  —  was  it  thought  necessary  to  seek  for  coun 
sel,  for  precedent  and  sanction  in  English  law.  The  advice  of  Gov 
ernor  Winthrop  and  other  leading  men  of  Massachusetts  Bay  was 
asked,  as  to  what  should  be  done  under  such  novel  and  distressing  cir 
cumstances,  and  the  conclusion  of  the  united  council  was  that  the 
man  should  die,  and  the  land  be  purged  of  blood. 

1  See  Historical  Memoir  of  the    County  of  New  Plymouth,  pp.  227,  228,  by  Francis  Bay 
lies. 


Fragment  of  the  Rock  at  Pilgrim  Hall,  Plymouth. 


Amsterdam. 


CHAPTER   XVI. 


PROGRESS   OF  DUTCH  COLONIZATION. 

THE  ORDER  OF  PATROONS  ESTABLISHED  IN  NEW  NETHERLAND.  —  DIVISION  AND 
MONOPOLY  OF  LANDS.  —  THE  COMPANY  OVERREACHED  BY  THE  PATROONS.  —  MAS 
SACRE  OF  THE  COLONISTS  OF  SWAANENDAEL. —  WOUTKR  VAN  TWILLER  APPOINTED 
GOVERNOR.  —  WEAKNESS  AND  ABSURDITIES  OF  HIS  ADMINISTRATION. —  SUPER 
SEDED  BY  WILLIAM  KIEFT.  —  POPULAR  MEASURES  OF  THE  COUNCIL  AT  AMSTER 
DAM. —  PURCHASE  OF  LANDS  FROM  PATROONS. —  INCREASE  OF  IMMIGRATION. — 
PROMISE  OF  PROSPERITY  TO  THE  COLONY.  —  PORTENTS  OF  COMING  CALAMITIES. — 
A  COUNCIL  OF  TWELVE  APPOINTED. 

WITH  the  short-sighted  selfishness  that  belongs  to  every  great  mo 
nopoly,  the  West  India  Company  attempted  to  assure  the  growth  and 
prosperity  of  their  colony  by  means  the  least  likely  to  secure 
that  end.     In  the  Netherlands  the  feudal  system  had  grad-  west  India 

11  i  i         •       -i^  -L-I     ±1       •         Company. 

ually  given  way,  as  everywhere  else  in  Jiurope,  with  the  in 
creasing  intelligence  of  the  people.  Titles  of  nobility  still  existed, 
but  they  had  come  to  be  held  in  little  esteem  ;  and  wherever  great 
manorial  privileges  were  still  tolerated,  it  was  rather  as  the  right  of 
landlords  than  of  chiefs.  But  this  system  a  great  Netherland  com 
mercial  company  now  proposed  to  reestablish  upon  the  virgin  soil 


430 


PROGRESS   OF   DUTCH   COLONIZATION.       [CHAP.    XVI. 


Seal  of  New  Netherland. 


of  a  new  continent,  where  that  pretence  of  right,  which  centuries 
of  endurance  were  supposed  to  give  it  in  the  Old  World,  had  no 
existence. 

The  plan  of  the  directors  at  Amsterdam  was  to  establish  seigniories 
in  the  hands  of  a  few  great  proprietors,  whose 
wealth  and  ambition  would  make  them  lords 
of  people  as  well  as  of  lands.  To  the  Com 
pany,  would  be  saved  by  this  course,  they 
argued,  all  the  enormous  cost  and  care  of 
emigration,  the  necessity  of  supporting  a 
small  army  of  officers,  and  much  of  the  ex 
pense  of  carrying  on  a  government.  The 
colony  would  increase  in  wealth  and  num 
bers  through  the  labors  of  the  great  proprie 
tors,  while  the  chief  function  of  the  Company  would  be  to  absorb 
the  growing  trade  and  commerce,  and  to  wax  fat  in  opulence  and 
power. 

The  "  Charter  of  Privileges  and  Exemptions,"  issued  by  the  West 
India  Company's  College  of  Nineteen  on  June  7,  1629,  provided 
that  any  person,  a  member  of  this  Company  (for  to  this  restriction  the 
College  adhered  even  in  their  new  measure),  who  should  purchase  of 
the  Indians  and  found  in  any  part  of  New  Netherland  except  Manhat 
tan,  a  colony  of  fifty  persons  over  fifteen  years  of  age,  should  be  in  all 
respects  the  feudal  lord  or  patroon  of  the  territory  of  which  he  should 
thus  take  possession.  Not  only  should  he  have  a  full  and  inheritable 
title  and  proprietorship,  but  the  power  to  establish  officers  and  magis- 
Proprietary  trates  in  all  towns  and  cities  on  his  lands  ;  to  hold  manorial 
privileges.  COurts,  from  which  in  higher  cases  the  only  appeal  was  to  the 
director-general  of  New  Netherland  ;  to  possess  the  "  lower  jurisdic 
tions,  fishing,  fowling  and  grinding,  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others  ;  " 
to  make  use  of  all  "  lands,  rivers,  and  woods,  lying  contiguous  to  his 
own  ;  "  in  short,  to  hold  and  govern  his  great  manors  with  as  absolute 
rule  as  any  baron  of  the  Middle  Ages,  with  the  added  advantage  of 
distance  from  all  other  constituted  authority  except  that  of  the  corpo 
ration  of  which  he  was  himself  a  member.  The  lands  which  such 
proprietors  could  take  under  these  conditions  might  have  a  frontage 
of  sixteen  miles  on  one  bank,  or  eight  miles  on  each  bank,  of  any 
navigable  river ;  with  the  privilege  of  extending  the  estates  "  so  far 
into  the  country  as  the  situation  of  the  occupiers  would  permit." 
The  patroons  could  trade  along  the  American  coast  within  the  Com 
pany's  nominal  jurisdiction,  if  they  brought  the  goods  obtained  to 
the  headquarters  at  Manhattan  and  paid  a  tariff  of  five  per  cent.; 
they  could  engage  in  the  fur  trade  where  the  Company  itself  had 


1629.] 


A  MONOPOLY  WITHIN  A  MONOPOLY. 


431 


no  factories,  on  much  the  same  conditions  ;  and  avail  themselves 
of  the  sea-fisheries  on  paying  three  guilders  a  ton  for  what  they 
caught.  Their  power  over  their  people  was  almost  unlimited  ;  for 
no  "  man  or  woman,  son  or  daughter,  man-servant  or  maid- 

,   5?  i  -i     i  ,  -.  Condition  of 

servant      could  leave   a  patroon  s   service   during  the  time   laborers  and 

they  had  agreed  to  remain,  except  by  his  written   consent;   der  the  cimr- 

and   this    rule    held    in    spite    of    any   and    all    abuses    or 

breaches  of  contract  on  the  patroon's  part.      The  Company  prom 

ised  to   protect  and    defend   the   proprietors   in  the   exercise   of    all 

these  privileges,  requiring  in  return  only  that  each  should  make  an 

annual  report  of   the  condition   of   his  colony.     The  only  privilege 

that  attached  to   tenants   under  the  patroon's   was   their    exemption 

for  ten  years  from  all  taxation  ;  though  a  certain  temporary  aid  was 

granted  to    them    by  the    Company's    promise    to  furnish    for  their 

assistance    "  as    many 

blacks  (slaves)  as  they 

conveniently     could." 

The     patroons     could 

bring  over  their  goods 

on  the  payment  of  five 

per  cent,  to  the  Com 

pany  ;  cattle  and  agri- 

cultural  implements 

came  without    cost; 

but  they  must  pay  the 

passage  of  "  their  peo 

ple."     Certain    minor 

rules    with    regard   to 

the   continued   impor- 

tation  of  provisions  in 

the  Company's  ships  were  also  inserted  in  the  charter,  but  they  were 

in  every  way  favorable  to  the  great  proprietors. 

This  creation  of  a  monopoly  within  a  monopoly,  had  some  im 
mediate  results  that  might  have  been  foreseen.  The  same  principle 
which  the  Company  was  carrying  out  against  the  rest  of 

,-,..,1,1  ,  .  Results  of 

the  world,  its  richer  and  shrewder  members  enforced  against  tnemonop- 
their  less  fortunate  fellow-shareholders.     Before  the  charter 
was  published  some  of   the  directors  in  the  Amsterdam  Council  had 
their  preparations  fully  made  to  seize  upon  the  benefits  they  knew 
to  be   in   prospect.      No    sooner  were    the   "  privileges    and    exemp 
tions  "  actually  made  law,  than  Samuel  Godyn,  a  director,   Thefirst 
informed    his    colleagues  that    he    and    his    fellow  -director,   Patroons- 
Samuel  Blommaert,  had  already  perfected  their  arrangements  to  oc- 


Dutch  costume* 


432  PROGRESS  OF  DUTCH  COLONIZATION.        [CHAP.  XVI. 

cupy  "  the  Bay  of  the  South  River,"  and  had  secured  their  title  and 
privileges  as  patroons  by  purchase  of  that  region,  and  by  due  notice 
to  Minuit,  at  Manhattan.  So  prompt  had  been  their  action  that  the 
purchase  had  been  made  two  days  before  even  the  first  passage  of 
the  charter ;  but  of  course  it  was  decided  to  come  within  its  rules, 
and  the  first  patroon's  patent  was  duly  delivered  during  the  next 
year.1 

Other  Amsterdam  directors  had  also  availed  themselves  of  their 
position  to  forestall  the  ordinary  stockholders,  and  were  but  little 
behind  Godyn  and  Blommaert.  In  the  spring  of  1630,  Kiliaen  van 
Rensselaer,  a  wealthy  dealer  and  worker  in  precious  stones,  bought 
from  the  Indians,  through  Krol,  the  Company's  commissary  at  Fort 
Orange,  an  immense  tract  of  land  on  the  west  side  of  the  North 
River.  It  extended  from  Barren  (originally  Beeren,  or  Bear's)  Island, 
about  twelve  miles  below  Albany,  to  Smack's  Island,  and  two  days' 
journey  inland  ;  and  to  this  he  added  later  in  the  year,  and  after  be 
ginning  its  colonization,  another  territory  to  the  northward,  carrying 

his  boundaries  nearly  to  the  confluence  of  the  Mohawk.  On 
quired  by  the  east  side  of  the  river  he  bought,  in  August,  a  third  tract 

with  a  river  front  extending  from  Castle  Island  to  Fort 
Orange,  and  from  "  Poetanock,  the  Mill  Creek,  northwards  to  Nega- 
gonce."  Michael  Pauw,  another  director,  had  meanwhile  acquired 
the  territory  opposite  Manhattan  Island,  on  the  west  bank,  which 
still  bears,  in  the  name  Hoboken,  a  part  of  its  old  title  "  Hobokan- 
Hacking;"  he  soon  after  secured  the  whole  of  Staten  (then  Staa- 
ten)  Island  ;  and  later  still  the  region  where  Jersey  City  now  stands, 
and  all  its  neighborhood.  While  Van  Rensselaer  called  his  estate 
simply  Rensselaerswyck  (or  Manor),  Pauw  bestowed  upon  his  the 
more  sonorous  latinized  title  of  "  Pavonia."  Fort  Orange,  reserved 
for  the  Company  in  the  north,  stood  isolated  in  the  midst  of  Van 
Rensselaer's  vast  domain,  while  the  post  at  Manhattan  lay  oppo 
site  the  long  river-front  of  Pauw's  possessions.  The  land  of  both 
patroons  far  exceeded  the  terms  of  even  the  liberal  charter,  absorb 
ing  some  of  the  Company's  most  profitable  trading-regions.  Van 
Rensselaer's  purchases  were  ratified  at  Fort  Amsterdam  on  the  very 
day  on  which  the  charter  was  first  officially  proclaimed  there  ;  and 
Pauw's  final  purchase  but  three  months  after. 

When  the  action  of  these  enterprising  capitalists  was  revealed  to 

1  July  15,  1630.  "It  was  the  first  European  title,  by  purchase  from  the  aborigines, 
within  the  limits  of  the  present  State  of  Delaware ;  and  it  bears  date  two  years  before  the 
charter  of  Maryland,  granted  to  Lord  Baltimore  by  Charles  I."  —  Brodhead,  vol.  i.,  p.  200. 
Mr.  Brodhead  found  the  original  patent  at  Amsterdam,  in  1841.  It  has  the  names  of  both 
proprietors,  but  the  English  version  among  old  Delaware  documents,  has  only  Godyn's. 
Compare  O'Callaghan,  vol.  i.,  p.  122,  note  ;  and  Moulton. 


1630.]  THE   PATROONS.  433 

their  fellow-members  in  the  Netherlands,  they  were  indignantly  de 
nounced  as  having  used  "  the  cunning  tricks  of  merchants."  So  strong 
was  the  feeling  against  Van  Rensselaer  and  the  rest,  that  they  were 
required  by  the  College  of  Nineteen  to  take  several  partners  into  the 
different  proprietorships.  But  they  easily  evaded  the  purpose  of  that 
order,  for  Van  Rensselaer  took  Godyn  and  Blommaert  into  his  part 
nership,  with  John  de  Laet,  Bissels,  and  Moussart,  other  Amsterdam 
directors,  and  kept  for  himself  two  of  the  fifths  into  which  he  divided 
the  estate.  Godyn  and  Blommaert,  in  turn  took  Van  Rensselaer  and 
de  Laet  into  association  with  them,  with  Captain  de  Vries,  and  several 
others,  also  directors.  By  this  convenient  arrangement  the  new  part 
ners  gained  little,  and  the  first  holders  merely  exchanged  one  property 
for  another. 

The  occupation  of  the  new  estates  was  nearly  as  speedy  as  their 
purchase.  Van  Rensselaer  had  begun  the  colonization  of  his  lands 
almost  as  soon  as  he  had  acquired  the  first  great  tract,  sending  out 
settlers,  cattle,  and  farming  tools  in  his  ship  the  Eendragt 
(Unity),  to  a  point  near  Fort  Orange.  Godyn  and  Blom-  of  their  es°-n 
maert,  with  their  new  partners,  hastened  to  follow  his  ex 
ample  with  their  lands  at  the  South  River  ;  and  Pieter  Heyes,  acting 
in  the  service  of  Captain  de  Vries,  took  out  in  the  Walvis  (Whale), 
some  thirty  emigrants  to  the  bay  now  called  Delaware,  and  early  in 
1631  founded  the  colony  of  Swaanendael,  the  Valley  of  Swans,  on 
the  shore  of  the  Horekill,  a  stream  near  the  present  town  of  Lewis- 
ton,  Delaware.  At  the  same  time  Heyes  crossed  over  to  Cape  May, 
and  bought  from  the  Indians  for  his  employers,  another  great  tract  of 
land,  stretching  twelve  miles  northward  along  the  coast,  and  twelve 
miles  inland.  Then  running  up  to  Manhattan,  without  stopping  to 
try  the  profitable  whale-fishery  which  was  said  to  exist  near  the  South 
River,  and  had  formed  one  great  hope  of  profit  with  Godyn,  he  applied 
to  Minuit  to  register  his  purchases. 

In  spite  of  the  jealousy  which  the  "  cunning  tricks  "  of  these  ear 
liest  patroons  had  excited  among  the  members  of  the  West  India 
Company  at  home,  it  is  probable  that  the  animosity  would  have  died 
away,  and  no  open  quarrel  have  arisen,  had  the  new  proprietors  kept 
quietly  to  the  management  of  colonies  which  soon  grew  to  be  pros 
perous.  But  they  were  not  content  to  confine  themselves  to  agricul 
ture.  The  lands  of  which  they  had  taken  possession  covered  some 
of  the  most  profitable  trading  ground  that  had  sent  its  wealth  of 
costly  furs  to  the  Company's  Manhattan  warehouses.  All  along  the 
river  the  Indians  had  brought  their  peltries  to  the  shore,  to  meet 
the  little  fleet  of  trading -yachts  which  now  sailed  up  and  down 
through  the  region  that  Hudson  had  opened  ;  and  the  exports  to 


434 


PROGRESS   OF  DUTCH   COLONIZATION.      [CHAP.  XVI. 


no'jfoiize  The 
fur  trade. 


Holland,  which  in  1626  had  been  valued  at  forty-six  thousand  guild- 
Thepatroons  ers>  na(^  rapidly  increased,  within  the  few  years  following, 
more  than  three  times  that  amount.  It  was  hardly  to 
expected  that  the  enormous  power  now  put  into  the 
hands  of  the  patroons  should  not  be  used  to  acquire  a  part  of  this 
profitable  traffic.  With  so  loose  a  regulation  as  that  imposed  upon 
them  by  the  clause  in  the  "  Privileges,"  which  permitted  them  to 
trade  "where  the  Company  had  no  factories,"  it  was  easy  for  them 
to  take  an  ell  instead  of  the  inch  it  had  been  meant  to  grant  ;  to 
regard  only  the  immediate 
vicinity  of  Fort  Orange  and 
Manhattan  as  covered 


Trading  for   Furs. 


those  posts,  and  to  quietly  absorb  the  traffic  of  the  great  intermediate 
region. 

This  infringement  upon  the  rights  of  the  Company,  however,  proved 
a  little  more  than  the  directors  in  the  Netherlands  would  bear,  and 
the  first  attempts  at  it  provoked  a  storm.  The  Company's  monopoly 
was  attacked  at  its  strongest  point,  and  its  authorities  rose 
in  a  protest  so  energetic  that  it  might  have  put  an  end  to 


Energetic 
protest  of 
the  West 

India  com-  the  patroons'  power  altogether,  had  this  not  already  been 
suffered  to  grow  so  formidable.  The  directors  drew  up  an 
order  forbidding  all  private  persons,  patroons  or  otherwise,  from  deal 
ing  in  peltries,  maize,  or  wampum,  and  sent  out  officers  to  see  to  its 
enforcement.  The  angry  complaints  of  the  proprietors  were  overruled, 
but  the  great  corporation  saw  too  late  the  folly  of  which  it  had  been 
guilty.  Violent  disputes  occurred  before  it  gained  even  a  partial  sue- 


1631.]  END  OF  THE  COLONY  AT  SWAANENDAEL.  435 

cess,  and  the  difficulties  thus  begun  not  only  seriously  hindered  its  own 
plans,  but  for  several  years  stood  in  the  way  of  the  whole  progress 
of  New  Netherland,  its  colonization,  agriculture,  and  every  condition 
of  its  growth. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  summer  of  1631,  the  ship  Eendragt  arrived 
at  Fort  Amsterdam,  bringing  letters  ordering  the  recall  of  peterMinuit 
Minuit,  who  was  held  to  have  been  far  too  complaisant  in  £heaco^-by 
confirming  the  purchases  and  privileges  of  the  patroons.  An  pany-  163L 
officer  of  the  Company,  one  Conrad  Notelman,  brought  out  the  order, 
at  the  same  time  that  he  was  instructed  to  supersede  Minuit's  Schout, 
Lampo,  in  his  office ;  and  in  the  spring  of  1632  the  discomfited  di 
rector-general  resigned  his  authority  to  the  council,  with  the  secretary, 
Van  Remund,  at  its  head,  and  sailed  for  home  in  the  vessel  that  had 
brought  the  order  of  his  recall.  His  voyage  was  an  eventful  one,  for 
bad  weather  compelling  the  Eendragt  to  seek  refuge  in  the  English 
harbor  of  Plymouth,  she  was  seized  there  on  the  ground  that  she 
had  traded  within  the  limits  of  the  English  possessions,  and  thus  a 
new  discussion  arose  as  to  the  Dutch  right  to  their  territory  in  New 
Netherland.  Like  the  former  disputes,  it  ended  in  nothing  definite. 
Both  England  and  the  Netherlands  renewed  their  declarations  of  own 
ership  more  positively  than  before,  but  after  a  long  correspondence 
with  the  Dutch  ambassadors  the  English  government  let  the  Eendragt 
pursue  her  voyage  in  peace. 

While  the  colonies  on  the  Hudson  were  suffering  from  these  dis 
putes  and  intrigues,  a  much  more  terrible  calamity  suddenly  Endof  the 
ended  the  existence  of  the  settlement  at  Swaanendael.  It  s°v'°anen- 
arose  from  one  of  those  arbitrary  acts  common  enough  in  the  dael- 
intercourse  of  civilized  with  savage  peoples,  —  acts  which  the  Dutch, 
however,  had  hitherto  been  wise  enough  to  avoid.  Heyes,  when  he 
had  founded  the  Swaanendael  colony  for  De  Vries,  had  set  up  a  pillar 
bearing  the  arms  of  Holland,  in  token  of  possession  ;  but  an  Indian 
chief,  attracted  by  the  glitter  of  the  tin  plate  on  which  the  arms  were 
engraved,  and  not  in  the  least  understanding  the  importance  which 
the  whites  attached  to  the  symbol  of  sovereignty,  had  taken  off  the 
metal  and  made  it  into  shining  tobacco  pipes,  which  he  carried  away 
in  great  delight.  Gillis  Hossett,  the  Dutch  officer  left  in  charge  of 
the  new  post,  was  indignant  at  this  irreverent  treatment  of  the  Hol 
land  escutcheon,  and  expressed  himself  so  angrily  that  the  comrades 
of  the  erring  chief,  thinking  to  conciliate  the  Dutch,  put  their  fel 
low  to  death,  and  came  triumphantly  to  report  the  fact  to  the  white 
commander.  He  explained  too  late  that  he  only  desired  to  repri 
mand  the  culprit.  The  Indians  were  enraged  to  find  that  their  costly 
sacrifice  had  been  a  useless  one,  and  soon  after  a  band  of  them  ap- 


436 


PROGRESS   OF  DUTCH  COLONIZATION.        [CHAP.  XVI. 


its  his  es 
tates  in 
America . 


preached  the  settlement  under  the  guise  of  friendship,  fell  upon  and 
murdered  every  person  at  the  post,  destroyed  the  fort,  and  left  only 
the  ruins  of  the  burned  houses  of  the  whites  to  mark  the  site  of 
Heyes's  colony. 

De  Vries  was  about  to  leave  Amsterdam  to  assume  the  place  of 
De  Vries  vis-  patroon  at  the  new  settlement,  when  Minuit  brought  to 
Europe  the  news  of  this  massacre.  He  did  not  abandon  his 
voyage,  but  on  arriving  at  the  place  where  his  countrymen 
were  murdered  he  thought  it  wiser  to  make  a  treaty  of  peace  with  the 
Indians  than  to  attempt  to  avenge  the  murder.  Going  on  up  the 

South  River  to  the  long-deserted 
site  of  Fort  Nassau,  he  spent  some 
time  in  its  neighborhood,  making 
still  another  treaty  there.  After 
wards  he  dropped  down  the  coast, 
and  visited  the  English  settlement 
at  Jamestown  in  Virginia,  by 
whose  governor,  Sir  John  Harvey, 
he  was  received  most  hospitably  ; 


Indian  taking  down  the  Arms  of  Holland 

and  the  neighborhood  of  the  two  colonies  was  amicably  discussed  with 
out  any  serious  dispute  as  to  the  rival  rights  of  Dutch  and  English. 

It  was  now  the  spring  of  1633  ;  and  while  De  Vries  was  cruising 
to  the  southward,  the  Company's  ship  Soutberg  was  on  its  way  from 
woutervan  Amsterdam,  bringing  out  a  fourth  director  -  general  for 
fourthgoT-  New  Netherland.  For  a  year  after  Minuit's  departure,  at 
nor.  1633.  a  £ime  wnen  it  most  needed  the  guidance  of  a  strong  and 
steady  hand,  the  colony  had  been  left  without  a  ruler  ;  and  the  new 
officer  who  now  arrived  was  anything  but  fitted  for  his  post.  Bred  in 
the  service  of  the  Company  at  Amsterdam,  Wouter  Van  T wilier 
was  little  more  than  a  clerk  at  the  time  of  his  appointment,  with 


1633.] 


VAN  TWILLER   AND  THE  ENGLISH  CAPTAIN. 


437 


only  the  narrow  experience  of  the  Company's  routine  business  at  home, 
and  apparently  without  a  single  quality  to  fit  him  for  great  responsi 
bilities.  But  he  had  married  a  niece  of  Van  Rensselaer,  the  chief  of 
the  patroons,  and  the  very  influence  there  was  most  cause  to  dread, 
seems  to  have  thrust  him  into  the  place  which  a  strong  man  might 
have  made  respectable,  but  which  he  could  only  belittle. 

He  had  barely  arrived  at  Fort  Amsterdam,  in  April,  when  he  was 
overwhelmed  by  difficulties  which  soon  showed  the  weakness  An  English 
of  his  administration.     On  the  18th  of  the  month  an  English  harbor  of  e 
vessel,  the  William,  entered  the  harbor,  whose  supercargo  dam. 
was   Jacob    Eelkens,    the   Company's   former   commandant   at    Fort 
Orange.      He    had    entered     the 
English   service    when    dismissed 
from  that  of  his  own  countrymen, 
and,  either  through  pure  malice 
or  from  hope  of  gain,  now  guided 
his  new  masters  into  the  richest 
possessions  of  the  old.     The  Wil 
liam  anchored  for  a  few  days  in 
the  bay,  and  Van  Twiller,  with 
De  Vries,  who  had  arrived  from 
Virginia  a  short  time  before,  dined 
with  the  English  captain.    But  the 
mask  of  frienship  was  soon  thrown 
off,  and  Eelkens  boldly  declared 
his  intention  to  go  up  the  river, 
the  Englishman  proposing  to  trade 
with  the  Indians  on  his  own  account  and  to  see  for  himself  the  land 
that  "belonged  to  the  English,"  having  been  discovered  by  "  Hudson, 
who  was  an  Englishman."  1 

Van  Twiller  caused  the  flag  of  Orange  to  be  raised  over  the  fort 
and  saluted  with  three  guns,  the  doughtiest  defiance  of  the  stranger's 
purpose  which  seemed  to  occur  to  him  ;  Eelkens  and  his  captain  as 
promptly  ran  up  the  English  flag  on  board  the  William  with  a  like 
ceremony.  The  director  strode  furiously  up  and  down  his  Bold 
ramparts  ;  but  when  the  Englishman  actually  weighed  his  ^^\ 
anchor,  and  sailed  away  up  the  stream  without  the  fear  of  the  ""•P**111- 
Company  or  the  Prince  of  Orange  before  his  eyes,  Van  Twiller  was 
beside  himself  at  such  audacity.  He  "  collected  all  his  people  in 
the  fort  before  his  door,"  and  ordering  a  barrel  of  wine  to  be  brought 
and  opened,  stoutly  drank  bumper  after  bumper  and  cried,  "  Those 
who  love  the  Prince  of  Orange  and  me,  emulate  me  in  this,  and  assist 

1  Voyages  of  De  Vries,  N,  Y.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  New  Series,  vol.  i.,  p.  255. 


De  Vries. 


con. 
the 


438 


PROGRESS   OF  DUTCH  COLONIZATION.       [CHAP.  XVI. 


me  in  repelling  the  violence  committed  by  that  Englishman  !  "  Then 
he  retired  to  his  quarters,  and  the  William  quietly  sailed  out  of  sight 
and  proceeded  to  Fort  Orange  without  hindrance.  "  This  commander 
Van  Twiller."says  the  downright  DeVries,  who  was  greatly  disgusted 
at  such  cowardly  conduct  —  "  this  commander  Van  Twiller,  who  came 
to  his  office  from  a  clerkship  —  an  amusing  case  !  "  Later  in  the  day 
De  Vries  dined  with  the  director,  and  gave  him  his  opinion  very  freely. 
"  I  spoke  then  as  if  it  had  been  my  own  case,  and  told  him  that  I 
would  have  made  him  go  from  the  fort  by  the  persuasion  of  some 
iron  beans  sent  him  by  our  guns,  and  would  not  have  allowed  him  to 
go  up  the  river.  I  told  him  that  we  did  not  put  up  with  those  things 
in  the  East  Indies.  There  we  taught  them  how  to  behave."  1 


After  several  days 
£  of  hesitation  two  or 
three  small  craft,  with  a 
force  of  soldiers  from  the 
fort,  were  sent  to  Fort 
Orange  in  pursuit  of  Eel- 

Van  Twiller's   Defiance.  keilS.        They  SUCCeeded  in 

compelling  him  to  return, 

and  the  William  was  then  ordered  to  leave  the  harbor;  but  this  tardy 
triumph  came  much  too  late  to  help  the  governor's  reputation.  What 
little  was  left  he  lost  in  a  quarrel  with  De  Vries  a  short  time  after, 
Avhen  the  patroon  sent  his  yacht  The  Squirrel  through  Hellgate,  in 
spite  of  Van  Twiller's  prohibition.  The  latter  threatened  in  this  case 
to  take  more  energetic  measures  than  before,  for  he  pointed 
the  guns  in  an  angle  of  the  fort  at  De  Vries'  vessel,  and  de 
clared  that  he  would  fire.  But  as  he  stood  with  some  of  his 
council  on  the  rampart  deliberating  when  he  should  have  been  acting, 

1  De  Vries'  Voyages. 


Quarrel 
with  De 
Vries 


1633.] 


VAN   TWILLER  AND  DE  VRIES. 


439 


De  Vries  himself  scornfully  approached  the  group,  and  rated  them  in  his 
usual  plain-spoken  fashion  :  "  It  seems  that  the  country  is  full  of  fools," 
he  said.  "  If  they  must  needs  fire  at  something  why  did  'they  not,"  he 
asked,  "  fire  at  the  Englishman  who  violated  the  rights  of  the  river  ?  " 
This  taunt,  it  is  recorded,  "  made  them  desist  from  firing  ; "  and  they 
contented  themselves,  as  the  patroon's  vessel  sailed  away  on  her  trad 
ing  voyage  along  the  eastern  and  northeastern  coast,  with  sending  a 

yacht  to  watch  her  movements.  On 
her  return  soon  after,  De  Vries  again 
and  as  coolly  disobeyed  the  govern 
or's  orders  by  going  on  board  before 
she  had  been  searched.  Secretary 
Van  Remund  and  Notelman,  the 


De  Vries  in  East  River. 

schout  or  sheriff,  were  sent  to  the  vessel  to  demand  that  her  furs  should 
be  entered  at  the  fort ;  but  Notelman,  who  was  "somewhat  of  a  louser" 
devoted  his  visit  to  a  continual  clamo»  for  wine,  caring  little  for  the 
business  in  hand,  and  only  protesting  that  "  he  was  dry,  and  would  go 
to  the  cabin  ; "  as  for  the  secretary,  the  patroon  openly  defied  him. 
Both  officials  were  finally  sent  ashore  with  the  assurance  from  De 
Vries  that  he  was  "  astonished  that  the  West  India  Company  should 
send  such  fools  to  the  colonies,  who  knew  nothing  but  how  to  drink 
themselves  drunk." 

Such  was  the  character  of  "Van  Twiller's  government  at  home. 
Abroad,  where  events  were  independent  of  his  personal  interference, 
results  were  not  always  ridiculous  though  generally  weak.  By  the  di- 


PROGRESS  OF  DUTCH  COLONIZATION.      [CHAP.  XVI. 

rection  of  the  Company,  Arendt  Corssen,  a  commissary,  bought  from 
the  Indians,  during  the  summer  of  1633,  a  tract  of  land  on  the 
Schuylkill,  within  the  limits  of  the  present  State  of  Penn- 
landsonthe  sylvania.  Here  he  established  a  trading  post,  as  some 
compensation  for  the  abandonment  of  the  posts  on  and  near 
the  South  River.  But  by  far  the  most  important  measure  of  the 
year  was  the  first  formal  attempt  made  by  New  Netherland  to  extend 
its  possessions  to  the  eastward.  In  the  valley  of  the  Fresh  or  Con 
necticut  River  were  now  living  a  great  number  of  the  former  neigh 
bors  of  the  Dutch,  the  Mohicans,  who  a  few  years  back  had  occupied 
the  region  opposite  Fort  Orange.  Conquered  by  the  Mohawks,  and 
driven  away  from  their  old  home  in  1628,  they  had  settled  in  the 
pleasant  country  to  the  east,  where  they  were  again  defeated  by  the 
Pequods,  and  reduced  to  the  condition  of  a  tributary  tribe.  Though 
beaten,  they  were  restless  under  the  yoke,  and  at  different  times  had 
The  Dutch  sought  the  aid  of  the  whites  to  restore  their  old  power  ; 
CoJ^cticut  but  neither  the  Dutch  to  the  westward,  nor  the  English  on 
River.  Massachusetts  Bay,  would  interfere  in  their  dispute.  At  this 
early  day  little  attention  had  been  paid  to  their  country  as  desirable  for 
colonization  ;  but  the  Dutch  had  pushed  into  it  in  search  of  peltries,  and 
had  found  the  valley  rich  trading  ground.  The  traders  had  already 
bought  lands  on  both  sides  of  the  river ;  and  the  arms  of  the  States 
General  had  been  affixed  to  a  tree  on  Kievit's  Hoeck  (Say brook 
Point),  at  the  mouth  of  the  stream,  in  1632. 

Commissary  Van  Curler  was  sent  to  the  Connecticut  with  direc 
tions  to  make  a  further  purchase  and  establishment  on  account  of  the 
Company.  Sailing  up  the  stream  to  the  mouth  of  Little  River  (the 
site  of  Hartford),  he  bought  tracts  there  on  both  sides  of  the  broad 
channel,  and  set  about  founding  a  post  to  be  called  Het  Huys  de 
Hoop  —  "  the  House  of  Hope,"  or  Fort  Good  Hope.  It  was  finished, 
in  spite  of  the  protests  of  the  nearest  English  colony  that  it  was  in 
violation  of  their  rights.  The  Plymouth  people  came  to  build  a 
trading-house  a  mile  and  a  half  above,  and  found  this  rival  post, 
which  was  to  be  the  cause  of  long  and  tedious  disputes,  in  full  posses 
sion  of  the  Dutch.  The  fields  about  it  were  under  tillage  ;  but  there 
was  little  or  no  attempt  to  settle  the  larger  tracts  Van  Curler  had 
purchased.  The  questions  which  the  occupation  of  this  outpost  raised, 
gave  to  Van  T wilier  ample  opportunity  for  protests  and  diplomatic 
correspondence ;  but  as  there  was  no  more  forcible  assertion  of  the 
assumed  rights  of  the  Dutch,  there  was  little  to  retard  the  inevitable 
fate  of  "  The  House  of  Hope." 

Indeed,  the  frontiers  of  New  Netherland  seemed  beset,  at  this  mo 
ment,  with  difficulties  brought  about  by  the  English.  Within  two 


1633.]  THE   SETTLEMENT  AT  MANHATTAN.  441 

years  of  this  settlement  at  Hartford,  the  Netherland  territory  seemed 
likely  to  suffer  indirectly  from  the  dispute  between  the  English  of 
Maryland  and  Virginia.  Harvey  had  just  been  deposed  in  Virginia; 
and  the  friends  of  Maryland's  old  enemy,  Clayborne,  finding  them 
selves  in  power,  which  they  had  little  hope  of  retaining  long,  conceived 
the  idea  of  establishing  a  post  on  the  Delaware  to  make  up  for  their 
loss  of  trading  privileges  through  the  Maryland  charter.  They  knew, 
through  De  Vries'  visit  to  Harvey,  of  the  Dutch  Fort  Nassau  ;  and 
acting  Governor  West  sent  out  a  party  of  men  under  a  Virginian, 
George  Holmes,  to  take  possession  of  the  now  abandoned  post.  For 
once,  however,  Van  Twiller,  to  whom  an  English  deserter  carried  news 
of  the  attempt,  was  induced  to  act  promptly.  A  force  was  sent  to  the 
Delaware,  and  the  English  invaders  were  captured,  brought  to  Man 
hattan.,  and  finally  returned  to  Virginia  by  De  Vries'  vessel. 

It  is  probable  that  some  of  the  difficulties  with  the  English  might 
have  been  avoided,  or  at  least  their  recurrence  prevented, 

The  disputes 

had  an  excellent  suggestion  made  by  the  Company  to  the  referred  to 
States  General  been  heeded.  The  William,  the  English  Govem- 
vessel  under  Eelkens's  charge,  had  made  complaint  and  de 
mand  for  damages,  on  its  return  to  England,  the  object  of  its  voyage 
having  been  defeated  by  the  action  of  the  Dutch.  The  application 
was  denied,  the  Company  claiming  that  damages  should  rather  be  paid 
to  them  for  Eelkens's  serious  interference  with  their  Indian  trade. 
The  controversy,  however,  necessarily  raised  the  question  of  the  Dutch 
title  to  New  Netherland,  and  it  was  proposed  by  the  Company  to  submit 
the  whole  question  to  the  arbitration  of  Bos  well,  the  English  ambas 
sador  at  The  Hague,  and  Joachimi,  one  of  the  Dutch  ambassadors  in 
England,  who  should  establish  a  boundary  line  between  the  English 
and  Dutch  possessions  in  America.  Had  this  suggestion  been  acted 
upon,  New  Netherland  would  have  had  a  different  history  ;  but  like 
former  questions  with  England,  this  was  suffered  to  slip  out  of  sight, 
and  in  a  few  months  the  matter  had  been  practically  dismissed  by 
both  governments. 

While  all  these  things  were  passing,  the  settlement  at  Manhattan, 
though  twenty  years  had  passed  since  it  was  begun,  was  still  little 
else  than  a  mere  trading-post.  It  very  slowly  acquired  any  of  the 
features  of  a  colonial  village,  in  which  industries  were  springing  up, 
new  settlers  constantly  acquiring  fresh  interests,  the  customs  and  life 
of  a  little  town  growing  into  form.  Its  people  were  the  Company's 
people,  with  the  occasional  addition  of  small  bodies  of  emigrants  from 
Holland  ;  and  as  yet  it  had  hardly  grown  to  have  an  interest  of  its 
own.  Its  history  thus  far  had  been  only  the  monotonous  record  of 
the  Company's  trade,  except  for  these  difficulties  with  the  English, 


442 


PROGRESS  OF  DUTCH  COLONIZATION.      [CHAP.  XVI. 


Dutch    Windmi 


and  the  measures  connected  with  them,  which  kept  the  little  band  of 
officials  in  continual  perplexity.      The  place  had,  however, 
NewWAm"       prospered  and  increased  in  some  degree.     New  houses  had 
been  built  of   good  quality,  some  of   them   of  brick.     The 
governor  had  erected  three   wind-mills,   and  quarters  had  been  ar 
ranged   for   about  one   hundred  soldiers 
I    which   Van    Twiller    had   brought    over 
p)  \    with    him.      A    church    had    taken    the 

place  of  the  rough  loft  in  which  the  few 
early  settlers  had  worshipped ;  and  here 
Dominie  Everardus  Bogardus,  who  had 
succeeded  Jonas  Michaelius  (the  first 
minister  sent  out  in  1628),  preached  on 
Sundays  the  doctrines  of  the  Reformed 
religion.  The  trading  vessels  of  the  Com 
pany  passed  and  repassed  the  fort,  or  lay 
at  anchor  in  the  upper  bay  ;  the  smith, 
the  cooper,  brewer,  and  joiner,  had  estab 
lished  rough  shops  near  the  fort ;  and  on 
the  north  side  of  this  a  farm  or  bouwerie 

had  been  laid  out  for  the  Company's  use,  and  was  industriously  cul 
tivated.  The  "  staple  right,"  or  right  to  impose  duties  on  passing 
vessels,  had  been  granted  to  the  settlement,  and  added  to  its  impor 
tance,  and  every  ship  entering  the  river  was  stopped  before  Fort  Am 
sterdam,  and  made  to  pay  the  impost,  or  land  its  cargo.  Across  the 
river,  opposite  Manhattan,  Patroon  Pauw's  commander  or  superin 
tendent,  Van  Voorst,  had  built  his  house  ;  and  the  early  colonists 
of  Pavonia  had  already  begun 
to  gather  about  it,  when  the 
Company  succeeded  in  buying 
back  both  that  region  and 
Staten  Island  from  their  owner, 
in  the  summer  of  1637.  Nearly 
two  years  before,  they  had  re 
gained,  by  a  similar  purchase, 
the  territory  of  Swaanendael ; 
but  to  compensate  for  this  re 
turn  of  property  into  the  cor 
poration's  hands,  Van  Rensse- 
laer  had  added  still  further  to  his  already  enormous  estates,  which 
were  prospering  and  growing  valuable  under  his  able  manager,  Ar- 
endt  Van  Curler  ;  while  numerous  less  important  proprietors,  among 
them  Van  Twiller  himself  and  other  official  persons,  who  did  not  fail 


Governor's    House  and   Church. 


1637.] 


VAN   TWILLER'S   UNPOPULARITY. 


443 


to  take  good  cave  of  their  own  interests,  had  acquired  lands  about 
Manhattan,  and  on  the  western  end  of  Long  Island. 

Thus  affairs  stood  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  year  of  Van  Twiller's 
administration.     The  incompetent  governor  had  grown  more   unpopuiar- 
and  more  imbecile  in  his  conduct  of  home  affairs,  and  he  was  l^-van^01 
regarded  only  with  contempt  by  the  few  sensible  men  about  Twiller- 
him.     Irritable  and  consequential  as  he  was  weak,  he  was  constantly 
involved  in  petty  quarrels  with  his  associates.   Dominie  Bogardus,  who 
does  not  seem  to  have  had  all  that  forbearance  and  gentleness  which 
usually  belong  to  clergymen,  is  known  to  have  called  him,  on  one 
occasion,  "  a  child  of  the  devil,"  and  to  have  declared  that  he  would 
give  him  "  such  a  shake  from  the  pulpit,  on  the  next  Sunday,  as 


The  Obstinate  Trumpeter. 

would  make  him  shudder."  No  doubt  the  governor  deserved  it,  for 
he  often  brought  disgrace  upon  himself  and  his  office  by  brawling  over 
his  wine  with  the  drunken  superintendents  or  captains  among  whom 
he  found  congenial  companionship.  With  such  a  head,  the  discipline 
among  minor  officers  was  naturally  lax  enough  ;  and  the  gravity  of 
the  few  records  of  the  time  is  occasionally  enlivened  by  narratives 
which  might  almost  seem  exaggerations  in  the  pages  of  Diedrich 
Knickerbocker.  Such  was  a  quarrel  between  certain  officers  of  the 
fort  and  the  fort's  trumpeter,  Corlaer,  because  the  latter  persisted  in 
trumpeting  in  the  midst  of  a  leisurely  banquet  which  the  others  were 
enjoying  with  their  friends  at  a  corner  of  the  ramparts.  The  sturdy 
musician  had  the  best  of  it,  in  spite  of  the  number  against  him,  for 
having  given  each  of  the  company  a  "  drubbing,"  he  retired  in  good 


444  PROGRESS   OF   DUTCH  COLONIZATION.     [CHAP.  XVI. 

order.  Nor  did  their  going  for  their  swords,  and  venting  their  wrath 
in  vows  to  "  eat"  the  trumpeter,  have  any  disastrous  result,1  for,  says 
the  faithful  chronicler,  when  in  the  morning  the  wine  was  evaporated, 
"  their  courage  was  somewhat  lowered  and  they  did  not  endeavor  much 
to  find  the  trumpeter." 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  an  administration  conducted  in 
Kecaii  of  so  slipshod  and  absurd  a  fashion  should  receive  the  sharp 
van  Twiiier.  censure  of  the  few  capable  men  about  the  governor  ;  and 
it  was  through  Van  Twiller's  treatment  of  one  of  these,  Van  Dinck- 
lage,  the  schout  who  now  occupied  Notelman's  place,  that  the 
government  was  suddenly  checked  in  the  midst  of  its  abuses.  For 
Van  Dincklage,  having  ventured  to  express  his  contempt  too  openly, 
was  sent  back  to  Holland  with  large  arrears  of  salary  unpaid,  and  in 
a  condition  giving  him  a  decided  right  to  complain,  which  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  do.  To  such  purpose  did  he  represent  the  governor's  con 
duct  before  the  board  of  Amsterdam  directors,  that  they  determined  at 
once  upon  Van  Twiller's  recall,  especially  as  the  sellout's  account  was 
almost  immediately  confirmed  on  the  return  of  De  Vries  from  one  of 
his  frequent  voyages.  In  the  summer  of  1637,  the  indignant  Van 
Twiller  received  notice  of  his  removal.  If  his  official  career,  however, 
had  brought  him  nothing  else,  it  had  brought  him  wealth.  He  was 
now  one  of  the  richest  among  the  private  citizens  of  the  colony,  own 
ing,  with  other  large  tracts  of  land,  several  islands  in  the  East  River, 
one  of  which  was  Nutten  —  now  Governor's  —  Island,  at  its  mouth. 

William  Kieft  of  Amsterdam,  the  fifth  director-general  or  governor 
wiiiiam  °^  New  Netherland,  was  almost  as  singular  a  selection  on  the 
«thtgoTer-  Part  °f  the  directors  as  his  predecessor.  His  record,  in  so 
far  as  it  has  been  preserved,  did  not  show  a  mere  routine  ex 
perience,  like  that  of  Van  Twiller,  but  it  had  worse  elements  in  an 
other  way.  He  had  been  an  unsuccessful  merchant,  his  business  career 
ending  in  bankruptcy,  for  which  in  accordance  with  the  custom  of  the 
time  and  place,  his  portrait  was  nailed  to  the  gibbet.  A  still  worse 
crime  was  laid  to  his  charge  ;  for  he  was  accused  of  having  left  in  cap 
tivity  in  Turkey  some  unhappy  prisoners  he  was  sent  to  ransom,  while 
he  embezzled  the  money  their  friends  had  provided  for  their  release.2 
But  he  had  been  strongly  recommended  to  the  Company's  College  of 
Nineteen,  and  his  appointment  was  secured  by  friends  at  Amsterdam. 
On  the  28th  of  March,  1638,  he  reached  his  post  at  Manhattan  ;  and 
while  Van  Twiller  retired  to  enjoy  the  comfortable  prosperity  which 
he  had  secured  by  the  thrifty  use  of  his  official  opportunities,3  his  suc- 

1  De  Vries,  in  N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  New  Series,  vol.  i.,  p.  259. 

2  De  Vries ;  and  authorities  in  Brodhead,  vol.  i.,  p.  274. 

8  There  is  a  partial  inventory  of  the  large  property  Van  Twiller  accumulated  in  the 
Albany  Kecords,  vol.  i.,  pp.  89,  91,  101.     O'Callaghan,  vol.  i ,  p.  183. 


1638.]  ADMINISTRATION  OF  WILLIAM  KIEFT.  445 

cessor  entered  upon  his  duties  with  a  vigor  that  at  least  promised  well. 
Kieft's  tendencies  were  decidedly  despotic ;  he  organized  a  council 
with  a  single  member,  besides  himself,  who  had  but  one  vote  to  the 
governor's  two.  Furthermore,  he  immediately  issued  various  decrees 
which  restricted  all  the  powers  of  the  post  to  a  few  officers  who  were 
little  more  than  his  tools  ;  but  in  spite  of  this  his  early  measures  were 
generally  wise  and  beneficial. 

It  was  indeed  a  wretched  condition  of  affairs  that  greeted  him  on 
his  arrival ;  and  his  first  act  was  to  have  a  formal  affidavit  Condition  of 
made  by  certain  officers  and  men  as  to  the  state  of  the  oneK°ef°J 
Company's  property  at  Manhattan  ;  and  to  embody  this  in  arriTal- 
a  report  to  Holland.  Van  Twiller's  zeal  for  improvements  and  build 
ing  had  completely  died  away  during  the  last  part  of  his  rule  ;  and 
all  the  repairs  and  new  houses  upon  which  he  at  first  lavished  the 
Company's  money,  had  been  suffered  to  fall  into  decay.  The  walls  of 
the  fort  had  fallen  on  all  sides ;  the  guns  were  without  carriages  ; 
the  houses,  the  mills,  the  work-shops,  both  within  and  without  the 
fort,  were  in  a  dilapidated  condition ;  none  of  the  vessels,  except  the 
yacht  Prince  William,  was  fit  to  be  put  under  sail  ;  it  was  difficult 
even  to  find  the  site  where  the  magazine  or  public  store  once  stood  ; 
the  Company's  farms  were  without  tenants,  and  the  land  turned  into 
common.1  It  was  not  only  matters  of  property  that  were  in  disorder ; 
the  moral  condition  of  the  post  and  its  discipline  in  regard  to  trade 
were  equally  out  of  joint.  The  crews  that  visited  the  port  and  the 
traders  who  made  it  their  headquarters  were  a  rough  and  lawless  set, 
and  small  and  poor  as  the  Manhattan  settlement  was  at  this  time,  most 
of  the  elaborate  forms  of  smuggling,  cheating,  and  adulteration  of  goods 
appear  from  Kieft's  documents  to  have  flourished  among  its  people. 

He  took  these  abuses  in  hand  at  once,  and  a  series  of  arbitrary 
but  needed  measures,  port  regulations,  excise  laws,  and  dis 
ciplinary  rules  extending  to  the  smallest  details,  marked  the  metres  of 
beginning  of  his  administration.  The  attempts  to  enforce 
them  were  not  always  successful,  nor  could  they  put  a  stop  to  the 
constant  petty  thefts  of  the  Company's  goods  by  its  minor  officers, 
or  the  abuse  of  their  official  opportunities  by  which  they  were  fast 
growing  rich.  In  spite  of  Kieft's  energy,  the  change  of  Manhattan 
Island  from  a  disorderly  trading-post  to  anything  like  a  peaceful  and 
prosperous  colony,  was  only  to  be  brought  about  by  influences  quite 
outside  of  his  control ;  and  it  was  most  fortunate  for  all  New  Nether- 
land  that  such  influences  were  at  last  to  make  themselves  felt,  even 
about  the  council-board  of  the  selfish  and  short-sighted  directors  at 
Amsterdam. 

1  The  deposition  in  full  is  in  N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  New  Series,  vol.  i.,  p.  279. 


446  PROGRESS  OF  DUTCH  COLONIZATION.     [CHAP.  XVI. 

The  patroon  difficulties  had  been  partly  settled  —  or  at  least  so  the 
New  de-  directors  hoped  —  by  the  Company's  buying  back  Pavonia 
moa^rsffr°orm  and  Swaanendael,  thus  opening  new  fields  for  their  trade. 


thepatroons.  j^u{.  though  the  Company  was  rid  of  a  few  competitors  by 
this  means,  Van  Rensselaer  and  his  fellows,  among  whom  were  some 
new  proprietors,  had  been  growing  stronger  and  more  prosperous 
while  the  affairs  of  the  corporation  were  mismanaged.  Taking  ad 
vantage  of  their  own  strength  and  the  Company's  weakness,  they 
proposed  a  remedy  of  their  own  for  the  troubles  and  abuses  which 
the  directors  were  striving  to  cure.  This  was  that  their  already 
enormous  privileges  should  be  largely  increased,  and  their  irrespon 
sible  jurisdiction  be  still  more  extended. 

This  extraordinary  request  was  promptly  refused  ;  but  it  was  evi 
dent  that  something  must  be  done,  if  the  Company  would 
wes't'india  save  itself  from  the  horns  of  a  very  awkward  dilemma. 
It  had  not  power  enough  to  assume  a  high  tone  with  the 
patroons  unless  the  States  aided  it  ;  and  they  on  the  other  hand 
would  not  aid  it  unless  it  showed  itself  capable  of  the  better  govern 
ment  of  its  colony.  In  this  crisis  the  chamber  at  Amsterdam,  with 
the  assent  of  the  Council  of  Nineteen,  adopted  a  measure  which  in 
some  degree  redeemed  its  former  folly,  and  solved  the  question,  so 
far  as  could  be  done  by  half  measures.  It  resolved  to  do  what  should 
have  been  done  long  before,  and  in  a  proclamation,  in  the  fall  of  1638, 
it  opened  the  New  Netherland  trade  to  virtually  free  competition. 
People  of  the  United  Provinces,  and  their  "  allies  and  friends  "  of 
whatever  nation,  might  convey  any  cattle,  merchandise,  or  goods  to 
New  Netherland  in  the  Company's  ships,  and  receive  "  whatever  re 
turns  they  or  their  agents  might  be  able  to  obtain  in  those  quarters 
therefor,"  subject  to  a  duty  of  ten  per  cent,  on  imports  and  fifteen  per 
cent,  on  exports.  "  And  whereas,"  said  the  proclamation  further,  "  it 
is  the  intention  of  the  Company  to  people  the  lands  there  more  and 
more,  and  to  bring  them  into  a  proper  state  of  cultivation,  the  director 
and  council  there  shall  be  instructed  to  accommodate  every  one,  accord 
ing  to  his  condition  and  means,  with  as  much  land  as  he,  by  him  and 
his  family,  can  properly  cultivate  ;  "  such  lands  to  become  the  abso 
lute  property  of  the  possessor,  on  payment  of  a  quitrent  of  one  tenth 
of  the  produce  to  the  Company.  Any  colonist  taking  advantage  of 
this  provision  had  only  to  promise  to  submit  to  the  laws  in  force  in 
New  Netherland  ;  and  even  further  privileges,  such  as  free  passages, 
and  aid  in  bringing  over  stock  for  their  prospective  farms,  were  granted 
by  the  Amsterdam  directors  to  desirable  emigrants. 

This  wise  and  timely  act  placed  New  Netherland  where  it  had 
never  been  before  —  on  an  equality,  so  far,  with  the  English  colonies 


1640.] 


BETTER  TIMES  IN  NEW  NETHERLAND. 


447 


about  it.     The  change  the  measure  wrought  in  its  condition  was  great 
and  immediate.    Emigration  from  Holland  began  in  the  very   increased 
autumn  after  the  issue  of  the  proclamation,  De  Vries,  who  f™^7io?-n 
had  bought  land  on  Staten  Island,  being  one  of   the  first  land- 
to  carry  out  colonists  to  the  plantation.     During  the  next  summer 
ship  after  ship  brought  emigrants,  people  of  all  conditions,  from  sub 
stantial  burghers  to  the  laborers  whom  they  had  employed  at  home. 
From  an  unprofitable  trading-post  New  Netherland  suddenly  became, 
in  the  eyes  of  Hollanders,  a  very  land  of  promise.     Those  who  emi 
grated  to  it  wrote  to  their  friends  at  home  of  the  prosperity  which 


Landing  of   Dutch  Colony  on   Staten   Island. 

began  to  spring  up  about  them  ;  rich  men,  like  Melyn  of  Antwerp, 
who  came  "to  see  the  country,"  sent  back  for  their  families  and  ser 
vants  to  join  them.  Nor  was  the  immigration  from  the  Netherlands 
only ;  men  who  had  long  been  restless  under  the  severity  of  Puritan 
rule  began  to  seek  new  homes  among  the  tolerant  Dutch  ;  "  whole 
settlements,"  says  the  record,  removed  to  Dutch  territory  to  avail 
themselves  of  the  new  freedom  offered  there,  and  "  to  escape  from  the 
insupportable  government  of  New  England."1  Many  came  from  Vir 
ginia  also,  who  had  been  bound  to  masters  there,  and  had  served  out 
their  time. 

1  The  phrase  of  the  Journael  Van  Nieuio  Nederlaiit,  1647.     See,  also,  O'Callaghan,  vol.  i., 
p.  208. 


448  PROGRESS  OF  DUTCH  COLONIZATION.      [CHAP.  XVI. 

The  main  current  of  this  sudden  immigration  set  toward  Man 
hattan  Island  and  the  region  about  it,  though  the  colonies 
New  Am-  farther  up  the  river  and  on  Staten  Island  also  benefited  by 
it.  On  Manhattan  itself,  where  the  "  town  of  New  Amster 
dam  "  was  now  first  becoming  worthy  of  such  a  name,  thirty  well- 
stocked  bouweries  [farms]  had  taken  the  place,  in  the  summer  of  1639, 
of  the  few  neglected  ones  noticed  in  Kieft's  first  report,  and  there 
were  applications  for  grants  of  land  for  a  hundred  more.  Kieft  had 
bought  from  the  Indians,  in  view  of  the  growing  demand,  nearly  all 
the  land  that  now  forms  Queen's  County,  and  part  of  that  in  southern 
Westchester,  and  this  began  to  be  peopled.  A  part  of  the  shore  of  the 
bay,  north  of  the  entrance  to  the  Kill  van  Kull,  was  also  purchased, 
besides  private  tracts  in  different  places.  Prosperity  seemed  to  follow 
every  enterprise  of  the  new  comers,  and  many  of  the  old  abuses  van 
ished  with  the  coming  of  a  better  class  of  people.  The  Virginians 
brought  cherry  and  peach  trees,  which  were  soon  abundant  in  the 
island  bouweries ;  and  they  introduced  from  the  south  their  better 
method  of  tobacco- culture.  Far  up  the  river,  close  by  Fort  Orange, 
the  little  village  of  Beverswyck,  which  had  grown  up  on  the  lands 
of  Van  Rensselaer  and  was  the  central  point  of  his  manor,  shared 
in  the  new  immigration.  The  only  one  of  the  original  patroon- 
ships  that  had  succeeded,  its  prosperity  well  maintained  under  the 
capable  Van  Curler,  attracted  many,  and  the  persistent  efforts  of  its 
owner  sent  still  more.  Its  fertile  farms  and  excellent  houses  gave 
the  appearance  of  more  rapid  growth  than  was  visible  at  Manhattan, 
but  its  feudal  restrictions  nevertheless  were  a  serious  drawback  to 
its  progress,  which  was  less  real  than  that  at  the  river's  mouth.  In 
1640  the  restless  De  Vries  made  a  voyage  up  the  Hudson, 
DeVricsup  of  which  he  gives  an  elaborate  account  in  his  journal;  and 
though  he  appreciated  all  the  material  prosperity  of  Rensse- 
laerswyck,  his  quick  eye  did  not  fail  to  note  that  the  patroons  had 
"  very  much  embellished "  their  property,  at  the  cost  of  the  Com 
pany,  "and  that  they  had  well  known  how  to  turn  things  to  their 
own  advantage."  Their  policy,  like  the  earlier  policy  of  the  Company 
itself,  was  too  selfish  for  the  permanent  success  of,  their  colonies  in 
any  large  and  popular  sense. 

In  this  same  }rear,  1640,  the  College  of  Nineteen  passed  an  ordi 
nance  materially  changing  the  charter  of  Privileges  and  Exemptions, 
and  limiting  the  lands  of  future  patroons  to  a  water  front  of  one  mile, 
and  a  depth  of  two  miles ;  it  left  them  their  feudal  privileges,  but  put 
disputes  between  them  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  governor  of  Man 
hattan.  Furthermore,  it  recognized  any  one,  who  should  take  five 
settlers  to  the  colony,  as  a  "  master,"  entitled  to  two  hundred  acres  of 


1640.]  NEW  DIFFICULTIES  AND   DANGERS.  449 

land,  and  such  "masters  or  colonists"  might  form  themselves  into 
towns  or  villages  with  municipal  privileges  ;  it  established  a  second 
class  of  patroons,  restricting  them  to  one  mile  of  water-front,  and 
whoever  chose  might  trade  at  New  Netherland  in  the  Company's 
ships,  by  the  payment  of  certain  imposts.  It  was  a  great  improve 
ment  upon  the  old  charter,  curtailed  the  powers  of  the  old  patroons 
and  extended  their  privileges  to  the  people  at  large. 

This  removal  of  the  restrictions  upon  free  emigration,  upon  the 
possession  of  land,  and  upon  the  freedom  of  trade,  increased  Progress  of 
at  once  and  largely  the  prosperity  of  the  colony.     The  emi-   the  colony- 
grant  naturally  preferred  to  hold  his  lands  directly  from  the  Company, 
rather  than  from  a  manorial  proprietor  and  master,  and  the  possi 
bility  of  doing  so  was  an  inducement  to  remove  to  a  new  country. 
He  was  a  free  man,  not  a  serf.     This  fundamental  change  in  the  colo 
nial  policy  made  all  the  difference  between  a  community  possessing 
the  elements  of  success,  and  one  so  bound  and  crippled  by  its  laws, 
that  to  escape  from,  not  to  seek  it,  was  an  instinctive  impulse. 

A  healthy  and  rapid  progress  might  now  be  looked  for,  but  there 
were  dangers  and  difficulties  to  be  encountered  from  with 
out.     On  the  one  hand  were  the  encroachments  of  the  Eng-  til7and cu 
lish  upon  territory  claimed  by  the  Dutch  which  had  to  be 
met ;  on  the  other  the  more  serious  and  more  alarming  peril  of  Indian 
hostilities. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 


WAR   WITH   THE   INDIANS.  —  THE   SWEDES   ON   THE   DELAWARE. 

CHANGE  OF  POLICY  TOWARD  THE  INDIANS.  —  KIEFT'S  CRUEL  AND  STUPID  OBSTI 
NACY. —  MASSACRE  OF  INDIANS  BY  THE  DUTCH  AT  PAVONIA.  —  RETALIATIONS  BY 
THE  NATIVES.  —  MURDER  OF  THE  HUTCHINSON  FAMILY  AT  ANNIE'S  HOECK. — DIS 
ASTROUS  CONDITION  OF  THE  COLONY.  —  APPEAL  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  NEW  AMSTER 
DAM  TO  THE  STATES  GENERAL.  —  END  OF  THE  WAR.  —  KIEFT  REMOVED  FROM  OF 
FICE. —  TERRITORIAL  ENCROACHMENTS  OF  RIVAL  COLONIES.  —  THE  ENGLISH  AT  THE 
EAST.  —  A  SWEDISH  SETTLEMENT  ON  THE  DELAWARE.  —  FORT  CHRISTINA.  —  THE 
SWEDISH  GOVERNOR,  JOHN  PRINTZ. 

THE  wisdom  and  justice  which  the  Dutch  had  hitherto  shown  in 
their  treatment  of  the  savages  gradually  disappeared  under  Kieft's 
administration.  The  agents  of  the  Company,  in  their  intercourse 
with  the  Indians,  had  been  governed  by  a  uniform  practice ;  but  when 


Selling  Arms   to  the   Indians. 


trade  was  made  free  and  competition  grew  with  its  increase,  fraud  and 
oppression  followed  among  Indian  traders,  who  had  little  regard  — 
then  as  now  —  for  any  rules  but  the  rules  of  addition  and  multiplica 
tion.  This  reckless  love  of  gain  sowed  the  seeds  of  future  trouble  in 


1641.]  INDIAN  HOSTILITIES.  451 

supplying  to  the  savages  those  arms  which  could  alone  make  them 
very  formidable  enemies,  by  putting  into  their  hands  the  means  of 
avenging  the  wrongs  which  they  both  suffered  and  imagined.  In 
spite  of  all  laws  and  all  the  dictates  of  common  prudence,  guns  and 
ammunition  were  sold  to  the  Indians  at  enormous  prices  by  the  selfish 
traders  along  the 'Upper  Hudson,  and  even  at  Manhattan  whenever 
the  police  could  be  evaded.  The  Mohawks  bought  enough  to  arm 
four  hundred  men,  not  only  rendering  them  formidable  to  the  Dutch, 
but  arousing  the  enmity  of  other  tribes  along  the  river,  who  bitterly 
complained  of  the  superiority  thus  given  to  their  enemies.  Kieft, 
though  he  tried  to  put  a  stop  to  this  traffic,  added  fuel  to  the  flame  of 
hatred  now  rapidly  rising  about  the  settlements,  by  a  series  of  ill- 
judged  measures.  An  attempt  in  1640,  to  exact  tribute  of  corn,  wam 
pum,  and  furs  from  the  Indians  near  Manhattan,  raised  the  anger  of 
the  savages  to  the  highest  pitch,  and  an  attack  made  by  his  orders  on 
the  Raritans,  in  revenge  for  an  alleged  theft  on  Staten  Island  —  an  act 
really  committed  by  some  white  traders,  —  was  enough  to  bring  about 
#n  open  war. 

For  two  years  the  evils  that  resulted  from  these  acts  hung  over 
New  Netherland.  When  the  Raritans,  in  the  spring  of  1641,  Indian 
attacked  and  destroyed  the  settlement  De  Vries  had  made  hostlhties- 
on  Staten  Island,  Kieft  in  retaliation  offered  a  bounty  for  every 
head  of  a  Raritan  Indian  that  should  be  brought  to  him.  Later  in 
the  year  a  young  Weckquasgeek,  whose  uncle  had  been  murdered 
by  a  white  man,  years  before  when  Fort  Amsterdam  was  building, 
fell  upon  and  killed,  in  mere  desire  of  blood  for  blood,  a  quiet  settler, 
one  Smits,  who  lived  by  the  East  River ;  and  when  Kieft  demanded 
the  murderer,  his  tribe  refused  to  give  him  up.  Popular  opinion  at 
New  Amsterdam,  which  had  been  from  the  first  openly  hostile  to  the 
•director's  arbitrary  treatment  of  the  Indians,  compelled  him  to  delay 
till  the  next  spring  any  attempt  to  punish  them  ;  and  even  then  the 
expedition  which  he  sent  against  them  lost  its  way  in  the  forest,  and 
came  back  unsuccessful.  The  Weckquasgeeks  were  sufficiently  alarmed 
to  make  a  treaty  promising  that  the  murderer  should  be  surrendered  ; 
but  it  was  never  done.  In  the  winter  of  1642-43  another  Indian,  mad 
dened  by  drink  and  by  the  hostility  that  had  now  been  awakened 
everywhere  among  his  race,  killed  an  innocent  white  man  at  a  new 
colony  at  Hackensack  ;  and  again  the  tribe  refused  to  give  him  up, 
but  sought  to  compromise  by  paying  an  indemnity  of  wampum. 
About  the  same  time  the  Indians  of  Connecticut  were  aroused  against 
English  and  Dutch  alike.  There  was  enmity  on  every  hand.  The 
New  Netherland  people  shared  with  their  English  neighbors  the  dread 
of  a  general  Indian  war. 


452  WAR   WITH  THE   INDIANS.  [CHAP.  XVII. 

All  the  worst  traits  of  Kieft's  nature  seem  to  have  been  called  out 
by  these  difficulties  with  the  savages.  But  though  he  raged  against 
the  Indians,  and  talked  of  some  general  and  bloody  punishment,  the 
community  at  large  were  not  in  the  least  disposed  to  second  his  des 
perate  purposes.  He  was  openly  accused,  even,  of  a  want  of  sincer 
ity  ;  his  object  was  said  to  be,  not  so  much  to  punish  the  Indians  as 
to  swell  the  sum  total  of  his  balance-sheet  in  his  accounts  with  the 
Company ;  and  it  was  declared  that  he  was  too  ready  to  send  others 
into  dangers  where  he  did  not  dare  to  lead.  When  he  proposed  to 
send  out  an  expedition  against  the  Weckquaesgeeks  to  revenge  the 
murder  of  Smits,  the  popular  feeling  against  the  measure  was  so 
strong  that  he  was  constrained  to  call  a  public  meeting  for  its  consid 
eration.  The  result  was  the  appointment  of  "  Twelve  Select  Men  " 
who  should  aid  him  in  coming  to  a  wise  decision.  The  Twelve  were 
cautious  in  giving  advice.  The  murderer,  they  thought,  should  be 
punished,  but  his  surrender  was  to  be  again  and  again  demanded,  and 
any  general  difficulty  with  his  tribe  was  to  be  avoided  as  long  as  pos 
sible.  And  they  were  very  decidedly  of  the  opinion  that  inasmuch  as 
the  "  Honorable  Director  is  as  well  the  ruler  as  he  is  the  commander 
of  the  soldiery,"  he  ought,  "to  prevent  confusion,  to  lead  the  van," 
their  place  being  "  to  follow  his  steps  and  obey  his  commands."  The 
Honorable  Director  no  doubt  recognized  the  grim  humor  of  these 
solemn  burghers.  He  sometime  afterward  issued  a  proclamation  in 
which  he  thanked  them  for  their  advice,  but  forbade  any  further  call 
ing  of  popular  meetings,  as  they  tended  to  dangerous  consequences, 
and  to  the  injury  of  the  country  and  his  own  authority. 

Meanwhile  events  were  stronger  than  either  director  or  council, 
and  all  that  either  could  do  was  to  turn  them  to  a  wise  or  unwise  ac 
count,  as. the  case  might  be.  The  unhappy  tribes  on  the  lower  reaches 
of  the  river  were  a  prey  to  others  beside  their  white  neighbors  ;  and 
war  among  *n  the  middle  of  the  winter,  when  the  river  was  full  of  ice 
ie  savages.  an(j  ^&  savages  were  collected  in  their  winter  camps,  a  war- 
party  from  the  powerful  Mohawks  at  the  north  came  sweeping  down 
upon  them,  armed  with  the  guns  the  Dutch  had  furnished,  and  driv 
ing  before  them  far  greater  numbers  —  whole  settlements,  indeed  — 
of  the  Algonquins.  Without  making  a  stand  against  their  formida 
ble  and  always  dreaded  enemies,  the  southern  Indians,  the  Weckquas- 
geeks,  the  Tappans,  and  others  from  the  rivers'  banks,  fled  through 
the  woods.  Many  sought  refuge  with  the  white  men  towards  whom 
they  had  just  before  been  so  hostile;  and  they  were  received  with 
kindness,  some  at  Manhattan  itself,  some  at  a  colon}'-  which  De  Vries, 
always  the  friend  of  the  savages,  had  begun  by  the  Tappan  Sea,  and 
called  Vriesendael.  At  the  latter  place,  indeed,  the  refugees  were  so 


1643.] 


KIEFT'S  POLICY  TOWARD   THE   INDIANS. 


453 


many  that  the  patroon  was  anxious  about  the  safety  of  his  goods,  and 
paddled  a  canoe  down  to  Manhattan  to  ask  that  a  guard  might  be 
sent  him  from  the  fort. 

He  was  full  of  friendship  and  sympathy  for  the  persecuted  river 
tribes,  though  he  could  not  interfere  for  their  protection  against  the 
Mohawks  ;  and  when  he  had  brought  his  canoe  safely  through  the  ice 
floes  and  landed  at  New  Amsterdam,  his  presence  was  a  great  gain  to 
the  strong  party  there,  who  were  urging  upon  the  governor  that  the 


time  had  come  when  all  the  old  hostility  might  be  removed  by  a  little 
kindly  treatment  of   the  savages  in  their  distress.     Policy  Policy 
and  humanity  alike  suggested  that  they  should  be  at  least  towanfthe 
suffered  to  find  a  temporary  asylum  with  the  whites.     But  Iadlans- 
there  were  a  few  in  the  settlement  who  were  ready  to  aid  the  di 
rector  in  his  plans,  and  while  the  rest  debated,  these  resorted  to  a 
device  worthy  of  politicians  of  a  later  period.     The  Twelve  Men  had 
been  disbanded  some  time  before  ;  but  two  or  three  who  had  belonged 
to  their  number  now  reassumed  their  power  as  popular  representa 
tives,  and  authorized  an  act  which  the  whole  body  would  have  rejected 
in  an  instant.     At  a  dinner  at  the  house  of  Jansen  Dam,  one  of  the 
Twelve,  he  and  two  others,  by  previous  arrangement,  presented  to  the 
director  a  petition  purporting  to  come  from  the  community  at  large, 
in  which  they  asked  that  active  hostilities  should  be  begun  against  the 
natives.     "  Let  us  attack  them,"  said  they  ;  and  the  defenceless  con- 


454 


WAR    WITH   THE   INDIANS. 


[€HAP.  XVII. 


dition   of  the  Indians  was   urged  as  an  argument  for  a  sudden  and 
merciless  onslaught. 

Kieft  acted  at  once  on  this  pretended  popular  approval  of  his  own 
determination.  In  vain  did  De  Vries,  dining  with  him  two  days 
after,  point  out  the  folly  of  such  a  course.  "  Consider,  sir,"  he  said, 
"  what  good  it  will  do  —  knowing  that  we  lost  our  settlements  by  mere 
jangling  with  the  Indians  at  Swaanendael  in  the  Hoeren 
Creek,  in  1630,  when  thirty-two  of  our  men  were  murdered  ; 
and  now  lately,  in  1640,  at  Staaten.  Island,  where  my  people  were 
murdered,  occasioned  by  your  petty  contrivances  of  killing  the  Indians 


Counsel  of 
De  Vries. 


Dinner  at  Van  Dam's. 

of  Raritan,  and  mangling  the  body  of  their  chief  for  mere  bagatelle."1 
But  the  director  had  determined,  as  he  said,  "  to  make  these  savages 
wipe  their  chops."  He  knew  as  well  as  De  Vries  —  who  was  presi 
dent  of  the  Board  of  Twelve,  when  it  had  any  legal  existence,  —  that 
the  action  at  Dam's  house  was  a  transparent  fraud  which  could  deceive 
nobody  short  of  Holland.  He  was  not  influenced  in  the  least  by  the 
wise  counsel  of  De  Vries. 

Night  attack  Across  the  river,  at  Pavonia,  the  frightened  Indians  had 
campdatn  made  their  chief  camp,  many  hundreds  of  them  collecting 

there  with  the  Hackensacks,  who  numbered  perhaps  a  thou 
sand.     Upon  this  encampment  Kieft  had  resolved  to  make  his  first 

1  De  Vries,  N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  New  Series,  vol.  i.,  pp.  268,  899. 


1643.] 


MASSACRE   OF  INDIANS  AND   ITS   RESULTS. 


455 


attack,  and  on  the  afternoon  of  the  day  of  De  Vries'  remonstrance,  the 
soldiers  were  collected  near  the  fort  to  prepare  for  the  crossing,  which 
was  to  happen  on  the  following  day.  De  Vries  again  protested,  as  he 
saw  the  troops.  "  You  will  go,"  he  said,  "to  break  the  Indians'  heads ; 
but  it  is  our  nation  that  you  are  going  to  murder.  Nobody  in  the 
country  knows  anything  of  it.  My  family  will  be  murdered  again, 
and  everything  destroyed."  The  remonstrance  was,  of  course,  useless, 
though  Domine  Bogardus  and  other  men  of  influence  joined  in  it. 
The  night  was  occupied  in  preparation  ;  and  at  evening  of  the  next 


Indian   Fugitives  from   Pavonia. 

•day  the  soldiers  under  Sergeant  Rodolf,  going  out,  as  Kieft  falsely 
said,  "  in  the  name  of  the  Commonalty,"  were  carried  across  the  river 
to  Pavonia. 

De  Vries  sat  that  night  in  the  great  kitchen  at  the  director's,  by 
the  fire.  Just  at  midnight,  the  winter's  night  being  cold  and  still, 
he  heard  loud  shrieks  from  beyond  the  river.  Hurrying  Massacre  of 
out  to  the  ramparts  of  the  fort,  he  looked  in  the  direction  the  Indians- 
-of  Pavonia.  "  I  saw  nothing,"  he  says  in  his  brief  journal,  "  but  the 
flash  of  the  guns,  and  heard  nothing  more  of  the  yells  and  clamour  of 
the  Indians,  who  were  butchered  during  their  sleep."  As  he  sat  down 
.again  by  the  fire,  thinking  of  the  bloody  work  going  on  so  near  him, 


456  WAR    WITH  THE   INDIANS.  [CHAP.  XVII. 

there  came  in  an  Indian  man  and  woman  whom  he  knew,  fleeing  for 
their  lives  from  the  Pavonia  camp  ;  saying  "  that  the  Indians  of  Fort 
Orange  had  surprised  them,  and  that  they  came  there  for  shelter." 
De  Vries  gave  them  their  first  knowledge  of  the  truth  —  that  the  fort 
was  the  worst  refuge  to  which  they  could  come,  "  and  that  it  was  not 
the  savages  of  Fort  Orange  who  were  murdering  those  of  Pavonia, 
but  it  was  the  Swannekins,  the  Dutch  themselves."  And  with  this 
warning  the  good  patroon  took  the  pair  to  a  side  gate  of  the  fort 
where  "  no  sentry  stood,"  and  aided  them  to  hide  themselves  again  in 
the  darkness.  Eighty  Indians  were  killed  at  Pavonia,  and  forty  at 
Corlaer's  Hook  that  night,  with  horrible  barbarities  that  might  have 
given  the  savages  themselves  a  lesson  in  the  art  of  torture.  "And  this 
was  the  feat  worthy  of  the  heroes  of  old  Rome !  "  —  says  De  Vries,  in 
bitter  allusion  to  a  grandiloquent  boast  that  Kieft  had  made; — "to 
massacre  a  parcel  of  Indians  in  their  sleep,  to  take  the  children  from 
the  breasts  of  their  mothers,  and  to  butcher  them  in  the  presence  of 
their  parents,  and  throw  their  mangled  limbs  into  the  fire  or  water  ! 
Other  sucklings  had  been  fastened  to  little  boards,  and  in  this  posi 
tion  they  were  cut  in  pieces !  Some  were  thrown  into  the  river,  and 
when  the  parents  rushed  in  to  save  them,  the  soldiers  prevented  their 
landing,  and  let  parents  and  children  drown.  Children  of  five  and  six 
years  old  were  murdered,  and  some  aged  decrepit  men  cut  to  pieces. 
Those  who  had  escaped  these  horrors,  and  found  shelter  in  bushes  and 
reeds,  making  in  the  morning  their  appearance  to  beg  some  food  or 
warm  themselves,  were  killed  in  cold  blood,  or  thrown  into  the  fire  or 
water."  "  Some,"  he  adds,  "  came  running  to  them  in  the  country," 
mangled  and  mutilated  too  terribly  to  be  described  ;  "  and  these  mis 
erable  wretches,  as  well  as  some  of  our  people,  did  not  know  but  they 
had  been  attacked  by  the  Maquas  of  Fort  Orange."  The  troops  came 
back  to  the  fort  in  the  morning  with  prisoners  and  various  bloody 
tokens  of  their  "  victory  ;  "  and  Director  Kieft  welcomed  them  ex 
ultantly,  as  men  who  had  done  a  noble  deed  of  arms  in  behalf  of  the 
colony  and  of  their  homes.  They  had  simply  thrown  away  the  chief 
advantage  that  the  Dutch  colony  had  hitherto  held  over  its  energetic 
and  more  restless  rivals.  The  chief  guaranty  of  safety  and  prosperity 
was  lost  to  a  people  who  had  little  of  the  military  prowess  of  their 
neighbors  to  stand  them  in  stead. 

When  the  facts  of  the  Pavonia  and  Corlaer's  Hook  massacres  became 
known,  the  results  were  more  terrible  than  even  De  Vries,  with  all 
Terrible  re-  h*8  foresight,  had  looked  for.  All  about  the  lower  river  and 
Kieft'sfpoi-  ^ne  bay,  and  on  Long  Island  (where  petty  plundering  ex 
peditions,  soon  after  the  more  important  events,  drove  the 
tribes  into  common  cause  with  their  mainland  neighbors),  the  Al- 


1643.] 


WAR  WITH  THE   INDIANS. 


457 


gonquin  people  rose  furiously  against  the  whites.  The  terrors  of  an 
Indian  war  broke  forth  with  a  suddenness  which  appalled  the  colo 
nists  ;  and  every  swamp  and  wood  from  the  country  of  the  Hacken- 
sacks  to  the  Connecticut,  seemed  all  at  once  to  swarm  with  hostile 
savages.  The  outlying  bouweries  and  plantations  were  laid  waste, 
their  men  killed,  and  their  women  and  children  made  prisoners  ;  peo 
ple  from  the  farms  crowded  to  Fort  Amsterdam ;  even  Vriesendael 
was  besieged,  and  only  relieved  at  the  intercession  of  the  Indian  who 
had  come  to  De  Vries  by  the  director's  fire  on  the  night  of  the  great 
massacre,  and  whom  he  now  pointed  out  as  "  the  good  Swannekin 
chief."  A  hollow  and  but  half-satisfactory  peace  with  some  of  the 

tribes,  which  was  only  brought  about  bv 
De  Vries's  urgent  intercession, 
and  hardly  kept  by  the  efforts 
of  a  few  old  chiefs, 
gave    a    partial 


Massacre  of    Ann    Hutchinson. 

respite,  from  March  until  midsummer.  But  the  war  broke  out  again 
in  August,  with  renewed  fierceness,  among  the  tribes  above  the  Hud 
son  Highlands.  Early  in  the  month  they  attacked  and  plundered 
trading-boats  upon  the  river,  murdering  many  of  the  crews.  By  Sep 
tember  the  conflict  was  raging  with  full  force.  In  the  south  a  band  of 
savages  fell  upon  the  quiet  home  of  Ann  Hutchinson,  at  "Annie's 
Hoeck,"  now  known  as  Pelham  Neck,  near  New  Rochelle,  and  she  and 
her  family,  excepting  one  granddaughter  who  was  carried  away  captive, 
were  murdered.  Other  plantations  near  at  hand  and  on  Long  Island 
shared  this  fate  ;  the  Hackensacks  and  Navesincks  fell  upon  the  settle- 


458  WAR    WITH   THE  INDIANS.  [CHAP.  XVII. 

merits  to  the  westward  of  Manhattan  ;  even  at  the  outposts  of  Fort 
Amsterdam  men  were  wounded  by  the  shots  of  the  lurking  savages, 
who  might,  had  they  known  their  own  power,  have  exterminated 
the  whites,  who,  in  the  universal  terror,  were  almost  incapable  of 
resistance. 

It  may  be  imagined  that  during  all  this  terrible  retribution  Kieft's 
vindictive  rashness  had  brought  upon  the  wretched  colony,  his  life 
was  not  a  pleasant  one.  The  terror-stricken  people,  who  crowded  with 
unpopular-  their  families  within  the  dilapidated  and  insufficient  ram- 
ity  of  Kieft.  parts  of  t]ie  fort,  thronged  about  him  with  imprecations  and 
threats.  He  tried  in  vain  to  shift  the  responsibility  to  the  shoulders 
of  the  Twelve  Men.  "  You  would  not  let  them  meet,"  was  angrily 
answered  ;  "  how  then  could  they  have  done  this  ?  "  Even  the  three 
who  had  presented  him  the  pretended  petition  at  Dam's  house  deserted 
him,  and  attempted  to  repudiate  their  share  of  responsibility  for  the 
calamity  they  had  helped  to  bring  upon  the  colony.  One  of  them  — 
Adriaensen  —  stalked  into  Kieft's  presence  and  threatened  to  take  his 
life  if  he  did  not  stop  his  ''devilish  lies."  Indeed,  his  servant  at 
tempted  it,  and  fired  at  the  director,  but  he  was  instantly  shot  down 
by  a  sentinel,  and  his  head  was  afterwards  exposed  upon  the  gibbet. 
Adriaensen  was  arrested  and  sent  to  Holland  for  trial;  but  the  feeling 
of  the  people  remained  unchanged,  nor  did  the  proclamation  of  a  sol 
emn  fast,  and  the  remorseful  acknowledgment  that  these  things  were 
"  doubtless  owing  to  their  sins,"  persuade  anybody  that  it  was  the 
Almighty  and  not  the  director  who  was  the  author  of  all  their 
woes. 

Kieft  again  called  the  people  together  in  September,  1643,  just 
after  the  attack  upon  the  trading-boats  had  shown  the  gen- 
assembiy  of  eral  and  vindictive  nature  of  the  war,  and  begged  them  to 
choose  a  new  council  from  among  themselves,  to  consult  as 
the  former  one  had  done,  on  the  terrible  crisis  that  was  upon  them. 
Eight  citizens  were  selected,  who  seized  the  reins  of  government 
much  more  firmly  and  confidently  than  their  predecessors  had  done. 
New  provisions  were  made,  which  the  exigency  of  the  times  demanded, 
among  them  especially  the  equipment  of  a  large  force  of  soldiers,  of 
whom  fifty  were  English  settlers  under  John  Underbill,  lately  a 
Massachusetts  captain  who  had  fought  against  the  Pequods.  Confi 
dence  was  in  some  measure  restored  to  the  terrified  town  ;  and  the  re 
fusal  of  an  application  to  New  Haven  for  aid  —  the  New  England  col 
onies  being  pledged  to  each  other  not  to  enter  separately  into  war,  and 
New  Haven,  moreover,  doubting  whether  the  Dutch  could  be  justified 
in  the  course  they  had  pursued  towards  the  Indians  —  aroused  the  en 
ergies  of  the  New  Netherlanders,  who  saw  that  they  must  save  them 
selves  or  perish. 


1643.] 


COUNCIL   OF   EIGHT   MEN. 


459 


The  Eight  Men,  however,  did  something  more  than  use  the  scanty 
resources   at   their   command  within    the   colony.     On    the  A  council  of 
twenty-fourth  of  October  they  addressed  to  the  College  of  eiKhtmen- 
Nineteen  at  Amsterdam,  and  on  the  third  of  November  to  the  States 
General  themselves, 
then  in  session  in  the 
Binnenhof  l    at     the 
Hague,  the  first  docu 
ments  ever  sent   from 
the    people    of     New 
Netherland     to     their 
government   at  home. 
Two  letters   of  direct 
appeal  were  sent  from 
the   suffering  citizens, 
couched    in    simple 
terms    to  which    their 
hard  condition  lent 
convincing  eloquence. 

They  set  forth  how 
"  Almighty  God  had 
finally,  through  his 
righteous  judgment, 
kindled  the  fire  of  The  BI(ln.nhof.  ~ 

war  "  around  the  "  poor 

inhabitants  of  New  Netherland  ;  "  and  they  painted  a  pitiable  picture  of 
their  woes,  their  women  and  children  starving,  their  homes  destroyed, 
"  matters,  in  fine,  in  such  a  state,  that  it  will  be  with  us  according  to 
the  words  of  the  prophet  :  '  Who  draws  the  sword  shall  perish  of 
hunger  and  cold.'  '  To  the  States  General  they  wrote  that  the. 
"wretched  people  must  skulk,  with  wives  and  little  ones  that  still  are 
left,  by  and  around  the  fort  on  the  Manhattes,  where  we  are  not  one 
hour  safe."  They  humbly  prayed  for  such  assistance  "  as  their  High 
Mightinesses  should  deem  most  proper,  that  they  might  not  be  left  a 
prey  "to  these  cruel  heathens." 

A  terrible  winter,  and  one  full  of   sad    forebodings,  followed   the 
sending  out  of  these  earnest  letters  of  appeal.     The  suffering  people, 
crowded  at  the  southern  end  of  the  beleaguered  island,  and   Desperate 
dreading  the  Indian  arrows  even  at  the  doors  of  the  little 
huts  that  clustered   about   Fort  Amsterdam,  could  see   no 
hope  of  better  days  in  the  future  ;  and  the  many  who  could  find  pas- 

i  Then  the  meeting-place  of  the  States  General  ;  now  used  as  the  repository  of  the  ar 
chives  of  the  Netherlands. 


1643- 


460  WAR  WITH   THE   INDIANS.  [CHAP.  XVII. 

sage  in  the  vessels  going  to  Holland  in  the  autumn,  felt  that  they 
were  leaving  a  colony  that  could  never  rise  again.  In  this  anxious 
and  forlorn  crowd  was  Roger  Williams,  who  was  at  Manhattan  to  take 
ship  for  Europe,  the  Boston  Puritans  not  tolerating  his  presence  among 
them  long  enough  for  him  to  get  a  fair  wind  and  go  to  sea.  "  Their 
townes,"  he  says,  "  were  in  flames  ....  mine  eyes  saw  the  flames  at 
their  towns,  and  their  flights  and  hurries  of  men,  women,  and  children, 
the  present  removal  of  all  that  could  for  Holland."  J  It  was  only  with 
the  really  desperate  straits  of  midwinter,  when  all  attempts  to  gain 
aid  from  their  English  neighbors  had  failed,  that  the  spirit  of  the  Eight 
Men  and  of  the  people  rose,  as  man's  courage  does  in  extremities,  to 
energetic  measures  against  the  enemy  ;  and  even  then,  the  first  at 
tempts  at  offensive  warfare  had  but  little  result.  An  expedition  sent 
to  Staten  Island  in  December  accomplished  nothing  but  the  capture 
of  some  grain,  the  Indians  pursuing  their  usual  tactics  of  keeping  away 
from  a  large  body  of  organized  troops.  Another  sally  towards  Green 
wich  and  Stamford,  called  thither  by  a  petty  skirmish,  surprised  a  little 
Indian  village,  and  killed  its  warriors,  embittering,  rather  than  aiding 
to  end,  the  general  conflict. 

It  was  only  with  the  beginning  of  1644  that  any  real  success  came 
to  the  colonial  arms.  Certain  English  families,  who  had 
Indian  removed  from  Stamford  to  Heemstede  [Hempstead]  on 
Long  Island,  called  the  attention  of  Kieft  to  the  dangers  to 
which  they  were  exposed  from  the  Canarsees,  the  tribe  nearest  them  ; 
and  begged  that  an  expedition  should  be  sent  to  protect  them  from 
attack.  The  director  and  the  Eight  Men  sent  a  hundred  and  twenty 
men  in  answer  to  this  appeal.  Two  Indian  villages  were  surprised 
and  sacked  ;  more  than  a  hundred  warriors  were  killed ;  and  two  were 
brought  back  to  Manhattan,  where  they  were  put  to  death  before  the 
governor  with  such  atrocious  tortures  that  Indian  women  standing  by 
cried  "  shame,"  and  declared  that  the  Dutch  had  shown  them  new 
methods  of  torture. 

This  success  was  soon  followed  by  another  and  a  greater.  For  Un- 
underhiii-s  dei'hill  and  his  force  of  Dutch  and  English,  having  carefully 
expedition,  examined  the  main  position  of  the  Connecticut  Indians  near 
Greenwich  and  Stamford,  undertook  an  expedition  of  a  more  decisive 
character  against  their  principal  village.  A  night  march  through  the 
February  snows  brought  the  little  army  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  men  to 
the  outskirts  of  the  Indian  town,  which  they  had  hoped  to  find  unpre 
pared  for  their  approach,  though  the  moonlight  was  so  clear  and  strong 
that  "  many  winter's  days  were  not  brighter."  But  the  savages  were 
warned,  and  stood  upon  their  guard,  nearly  seven  hundred  strong, 
1  R.  T.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  vol.  iii.,  p.  155. 


1644.] 


APPEAL   TO   THE   STATES   GENERAL. 


461 


and  having  their  rude  fortifications  to  protect  them.  The  Dutch  line 
advanced  steadily,  unbroken  by  the  arrows  or  attempted  sorties  of 
the  Indians,  and  nearly  two  hundred  of  the  besieged  warriors  fell  in 
the  endeavor  to  drive  it  back.  Underbill  succeeded  at  last  in  firing 
the  village  ;  and  the  flame  and  the  moonlight  lit  up  a  slaughter  beside 
which  the  massacre  at  Pavonia  seemed  insignificant.  Eight  only  of 
the  savages  escaped.  The  Dutch,  with  fifteen  wounded,  made  their 
way  back  to  Stamford  ;  and  a  few  days  afterward  a  thanksgiving  was 


March  against  the  Indians  in  Connecticut. 

celebrated  on  their  arrival  at  Manhattan,  after  a  victory  which  effect 
ually  humbled  the  eastern  tribes. 

It  was  only  about  Manhattan  and  on  the  river  that  many  of  the 
tribes  continued  hostile  after  this  decisive  blow  ;  and  the  Eight  Men 
counselled  that  vigorous  measures  should  now  be  taken  against  these 
nearer  and  more  dangerous  neighbors ;  more  especially  as  the  arrival  of 
a  vessel  from  the  Company's  colony  at  Curac.oa  had  supplied  New 
Netherland  with  a  fresh  force  of  one  hundred  and  thirty  soldiers,  whom 
Peter  Stuyvesant,  the  Cura9oa  governor,  had  sent  away  because  he 


462  WAR   WITH   THE   INDIANS.  [CHAP.  XVII. 

had  no  use  for  them.  It  was  an  addition  of  military  strength  to  Man 
hattan  which  it  was  sorely  in  need  of,  and  warmly  welcomed,  though 
how  the  soldiers  were  to  be  fed  and  clothed  it  was  not  easy  to  see.  The 
treasury  was  empty  :  Kieft's  last  bill  of  exchange  had  come  back 
from  Amsterdam  protested,  for  the  Company  was  bankrupt.  His 
only  resource  was  taxation.  The  best,  the  most  obvious  thing  to 
tax  was  beer.  But  a  tax  on  his  beer  was  precisely  that  to  which  a 
Dutchman  would  not  submit.  So  the  director  blundered  through  the 
summer  of  1644,  without  one  wise  or  energetic  measure.  He  was  as 
inert  and  imbecile  now  as  he  had  before  been  violent.  He  wasted  his 
time  in  petty  disputes  and  jealousies  over  petty  measures.  Still  more 
of  the  men  on  whom  the  colony  depended  for  protection,  experienced 
soldiers  and  energetic  settlers,  returned  to  Holland.  In  spite  of  a  pali 
sade  built  across  the  island  nearly  on  a  line  with  the  present  Wall 
Street,  the  Indians  continued  to  skulk  almost  under  the  walls  of  the 
fort,  and  to  kill  and  plunder  almost  without  the  show  of  resistance. 
All  through  the  summer  the  Eight  Men  bore  with  this  condition  of 
affairs,  but  in  October  they  wrote  again  to  the  College  of 
against  Nineteen,  and  this  time  with  a  bold  and  definite  statement 
of  the  reforms  they  believed  to  be  needed,  and  the  changes 
they  demanded.  They  again  detailed  the  terrible  state  in  which  the 
unhappy  colonists  found  themselves,  and  pointed  to  Kieft's  acts  as  the 
source  of  all  their  troubles  ;  they  complained  of  his  arrogance,  and  his 
neglect  of  all  measures  for  public  good,  while  he  cared  only  for  his  own 
arbitrary  power.  It  was  impossible,  they  said,  to  settle  the  affairs  of 
the  country  without  a  different  and  more  popular  form  of  government ; 
and  they  asked  permission  for  the  people  to  elect  local  officers  who 
in  turn  might  send  deputies  to  confer  with  the  governor  and  council. 
If  their  High  Mightinesses  would  send  them  a  ruler  empowered  to 
encourage  such  a  system,  —  "  a  governor  with  a  beloved  peace," — all, 
they  believed,  would  yet  be  well. 

This  second  appeal  from  New  Netherland  reached  the  College  of 
Nineteen,  while  they  were  in  the  midst  of  the  discussion  of  the 
former  one,  and  of  a  great  number  of  complaints  received  from  other 
sources  with  regard  to  the  suffering  and  unprofitable  colony.  The 
States  General,  when  they  had  received  the  letter  of  1643,  had  per 
emptorily  ordered  that  the  Company  should  take  measures  to  relieve 
their  people  beyond  the  sea  ;  but  the  bankrupt  and  powerless  corpora 
tion,  now  seeking  to  merge  itself  in  its  great  and  successful  fellow  com 
pany  of  the  East,  could  do  little  toward  obeying  the  order. 
caiitoiioi-  As  usual,  however,  a  definite  demand  had  far  more  influ- 

land. 

ence  than  a  general  complaint,  however  eloquent,  as  it  sug 
gested  something  that  could  be  done  at   once.     The  immediate  pur- 


1645.] 


END   OF   THE   INDIAN   WAR. 


463 


pose  of  the  Eight  Men  was  gained:  Kieft's  recall  was  determined 
upon,  and  decreed  on  the  tenth  of  December.  A  provisional  appoint 
ment  of  Van  Dincklage, 
the  former  sheriff,  as  his 
successor,  was  revoked  in 
May,  in  favor  of  Peter 
Stuyvesant,  the  comman 
der  at  Curagoa,  who  had 
come  home  for  surgical 
treatment,  having  lost  a 
leg  in  an  attack  on  the 
Portuguese  at  their  Island 
of  St.  Martin.  The  Cham 
ber  of  Accounts,  to  whom 
the  matter  was  referred, 
reported  in  favor  of  the 
political  changes  recom 
mended  by  the  Eight 
Men,  and  against  Kieft's 
conduct  of  the  Indian 
war,  and  his  earlier  ad 
vice  that  the  savages  be 
exterminated.  They  sug 
gested  a  great  number  of  advantageous  changes  in  the  administration 
of  New  Netherland,  and  for  the  first  time,  taught  by  hard  experience, 
admitted  that  a  colony  could  not  be  made  successful  if  managed  solely 
for  the  immediate  and  selfish  ends  which  had  hitherto  been  sought  by 
the  Company  in  America,  without  regard  to  permanence  or  to  the 
popular  good. 

There  was  a  delay,  nevertheless,  of  a  year  between  determination 
and  execution  ;  but  in  the  mean  time  the  assurance  of  what  was  in 
tended  was  enough  greatly  to  encourage  the  anxious  colonists  at  Man 
hattan.  Kieft  had  a  hard  life  now  that  it  was  known  how  soon  he 
would  be  powerless  to  trouble  them  ;  and  he  only  aroused  more  bitter 
opposition  by  attempting  to  repress  by  summary  trials  the  boldness 
of  those  who  now  denounced  him  openly.  A  happier  event,  however, 
than  even  the  recall  of  the  hated  director,  soon  rejoiced  the  colony, 
and  gave  promise  of  the  better  days  that  were  believed  to  be  in 
store. 

With  the  spring  of  1645,  the  Indians  themselves  began  to  show  a 
wish  for  peace,  and  as  early  as  April  the  colonists  were  glad  Treatieswith 
to  conclude  a  treaty  with  some  of  the  tribes  about  them,  thelndians- 
Kieft  willingly  consenting,  in  the  hope,  perhaps,  of  still  retrieving  his 


Hall  of  the  States  Genera 


464 


WAR   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 


[CHAP.  XVII. 


reputation  with  the  Amsterdam  directors.  One  treaty  followed  an 
other.  In  May  the  mediation  of  an  Indian  ally  secured  a  lasting  peace 
with  the  tribes  along  Long  Island  Sound  ;  and  in  July,  Kieft,  aided 
by  the  patroon's  men  at  Fort  Orange  and  Rensselaerswyck,  brought 
about  a  similar  agreement  with  the  Mohawks  and  their  neighbors  on 
the  upper  river.  Only  the  tribes  immediately  about  Manhattan  re 
mained,  and  with  these,  who  also  wanted  quiet  that  they  might  go 
back  to  planting  and  trading,  and  escape  the  vengeance  which  Un- 
derhill's  victory  showed  was  in  store  for  them  sooner  or  later,  nego 
tiations  were  equally  successful.  On  the  30th  of  August,  1645,  the 

citizens  of  New  Amsterdam  assembled 
at  the  end  of  the  island,  on  the  ground 

^ .       still     known    as 

the  Battery,  and 


Smoking  the   Pipe  of  Peace. 

witnessed  the  smoking  of  the  pipe  of  peace,  and  the  conclusion  of  a 
general  treaty  with  all  the  hostile  tribes.  On  the  6th  of  September 
New  Netherland  held  a  day  of  thanksgiving  for  the  ending  of  the 
long  and  terrible  Indian  war.  Throughout  the  desolated  colonies 
about  Manhattan,  proprietors  and  laborers  began  to  rebuild  and  to 
cultivate  again  with  renewed  courage ;  but  the  country  had  received 
a  check  from  which  it  revived  but  slowly. 

Sixteen  hundred  of  the  savages,  indeed,  had  been  killed  ;  but  there 
was  not  a  single  Dutch  settlement,  except  that  at  Rensselaerswyck 
and  the  military  post  on  South  River,  that  had  not  been  attacked  and 
generally  destroyed.  Besides  a  few  traders  there  were  left  upon  Man 
hattan  Island  scarcely  a  hundred  people,  and  throughout  the  whole 
province  not  more  than  three  hundred  men  capable  of  bearing  arms 
could  have  been  mustered. 


1637.]  AFFAIRS   ON  THE   FRONTIERS.  465 

The  year  and  more  which  yet  remained  of  Kieft's  administration, 
was  a  time  of  petty  quarrels  between  him  and  his  officers  and  the 
popular  representatives.  The  Domine  Bogardus  denounced  the  gov 
ernor  from  the  pulpit,  —  as  he  had  done  his  predecessor,  —  as  a  vessel 
of  wrath  and  a  fountain  of  woe  and  trouble.  Kieft  retorted  by  hav 
ing  cannon  fired,  drums  beaten,  and  all  kinds  of  noisy  games  carried 
on  about  the  church  on  Sunday.  His  officers  and  soldiers  were  by 
no  means  reluctant  to  give  implicit  obedience  in  a  warfare  of  this 
sort,  and  for  a  time  the  town  was  kept,  between  the  domine  and  the 
governor,  in  a  state  of  unusual  liveliness.  Military  disaster  and  civil 
misrule  had  brought  affairs  to  such  a  pass  that  in  the  order  of  nature 
a  change  must  come,  either  of  reconstruction  or  absolute  dissolution. 
The  "  beloved  peace "  which  the  new  governor  was  to  bring  must 
have  wings  broad  enough  to  stretch  over  army,  state,  and  church. 

Meanwhile  affairs  on  the  frontiers  of  New  Netherland  were  m 
nearly,  if  not  quite,  as  bad  a  state  as  on  the  island  of  Manhattan 
The  steady  aggression  of  the  New  Englanders  had  left  the  Dutch  but 
the  merest  nominal  foothold  in  Connecticut  and  eastern  Long  Island ; 
and  the  serious  attempt  that  had  been  made  in  1641-1642,  to  settle 
the  question  of  rights  and  boundaries,  had  resulted  only  in  the  usual 
empty  talk  about  an  arbitration  which  never  came.  The  Dutch  set 
tlement  at  little  Fort  Good  Hope  was  more  a  source  of  amusement  than 
apprehension  to  the  authorities  of  the  thriving  town  of  Hartford,  the 
Dutchmen  listening  sometimes  to  remonstrances  and  reproaches,  and 
sometimes  submitting  to  outrages  they  could  not  resist.  Dutch  control 
in  the  Connecticut  Valley  was  gone.  On  the  southern  borders  of  their 
possessions,  however,  events  of  a  more  positive  character  had  occupied 
the  years  of  Kieft's  unhappy  rule.  Fort  Nassau,  reoccupied  a  few 
years  before,  held  undisputed  control  of  the  beautiful  region  of  the 
South  River  ;  the  old  importance  of  the  district  as  an  Indian  trading- 
ground  had  been  reestablished,  and  the  English  had  ceased  to  molest 
the  Dutch  in  this  part  of  their  territory,  when  about  the  time  of 
Kieft's  arrival  at  Manhattan  a  new  nation  appeared  on  that  river. 
These  colonies  Avere  to  have  a  brief  life,  but  to  leave  a  lasting  impress 
upon  the  region  where  they  were  established. 

William  Usselincx,  of  Antwerp,  who  had  first  proposed  and  had 
succeeded  in  establishing  the  Dutch  West  India  Company,  visited 
Sweden,  in  1624,  and  urged  upon  the  king  the  great  value  which  the 
founding  of  colonies  in  America,  and  the  trade  that  would  spring  from 
them,  must  certainly  be  to  his  kingdom  and  people.  The  wise  and  lib 
eral  Gustavus  Adolphus  was  fully  capable  of  comprehending  the  broad 
views  of  the  Holland  merchant,  and  entertained  them  warmly.  Us 
selincx  set  forth  the  advantages  of  his  plan  in  a  religious,  political,  and 


466  THE    SWEDES   ON   THE   DELAWARE.       [CHAP.  XVII. 

commercial  aspect.  He  showed  that  the  establishment  of  a  Swedish 
A  Swedish  West  India  Company  would  benefit  the  state,  in  the  spread 
company1*  °^  ^ie  Christian  religion  ;  in  adding  to  the  power  and  splen- 
formed.  ^QJ.  of  fae  sovereign  ;  and  in  the  decrease  of  taxes,  while  it 
augmented  the  general  commercial  prosperity  of  the  people.  Reward 
would  surely  come  to  a  state  aiding  the  cause  of  Christ ;  the  state 
itself  would  have  "  another  eye  ;  "  by  reason  of  the  increased  rev 
enue  "every  industrious  man  would  thrive;"  and  it  would  greatly 
tend,  said  Usselincx,  in  conclusion,  "  to  the  honor  of  God,  to  man's 
eternal  welfare,  to  his  majesty's  service,  and  to  the  good  of  the  king 
dom."  The  project  was  accepted  by  the  king  and  the  Diet,  and  ac 
companied  with  the  most  favorable  conditions  for  Usselincx  himself, 
who  was  to  share  largely  in  the  profits. 

Gustavus  Adolphus  fell  at  Liitzen,  in  1632,  before  the  absorbing 
importance  of  his  great  campaigns  had  permitted  him  to  take  any 
practical  steps  toward  the  carrying  out  of  the  plan  ;  but  he  had  it 
constantly  at  heart,  and  just  before  his  death  had  drawn  up  a  procla 
mation  in  which  he  called  the  project  "the  jewel  of  his  kingdom." 
Fortunately.,  it  was  left  in  worthy  hands.  The  chancellor  Oxenstiern, 
who  appreciated  its  importance  as  fully  as  the  king,  published  the 
proclamation,  urged  on  the  undertaking  with  energy  and  wisdom,  and 
in  December,  1634,  secured  the  passage  of  a  full  and  definite  charter 
for  the  Swedish  West  India  Company.  But,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
similar  Company  in  the  Netherlands,  it  was  several  years  before  the 
corporation  was  ready  to  act. 

The  hope  of  profitable  employment  from  this  Company  led  to  Sweden 
Swedish  coi-  the  discharged  director  of  the  New  Netherland  colony,  Peter 
pete^Min1-  Minuit.  He  pointed  out  to  Oxenstiern  how  useful  his  ex- 
uit.  1637.  perience  might  be  to  the  Swedes.  When  the  Company  was 
fully  organized  he  was  put  in  command  of  its  first  expedition. 

In  the  autumn  of  1637,  Minuit  set  sail  from  Gottenburg  in  the 
Key  of  Calmar,  accompanied  by  a  tender  called  the  Griffin,  with  about 
fifty  emigrants.  The  neighborhood  of  the  South  River  was  the  region 
upon  which  he  had  fixed  for  his  settlement.  The  two  vessels  entered 
Delaware  Bay  in  April,  1638,  and  sailed  up  the  river  as  far  as  the 
"Minqua's  Kill,"  as  it  was  then  called  by  the  Dutch.  To  this  stream 
the  Swedes  gave  the  name  of  their  queen,  Christina,  — since  corrupted 
into  Christiana,  —  and  here  Minuit  made  a  treaty  with  the  Indian 
sachem  of  the  region,  buying,  for  a  kettle  and  some  trifling  wares,  all 
the  land  on  the  west  side  of  the  South  River,  from  Cape  Henlopen  to 
the  falls  near  Santickan  (now  Trenton),  and  "as  much  inwards  from 
it  in  breadth  as  they  might  want."  l  The  spot  they  chose  for  their 

1  Acrelins'  Hist,  of  New  Sweden,  translated  in  TV.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  New  Series,  vol.  i., 
p.  409  ;  Hudde's  Report  on  the  Swedish  Colony,  ib.,  439. 


1638.] 


THE    SETTLEMENT   AT   FORT   CHRISTINA. 


467 


trading-house  and  fort  —  Fort  Christina  —  was  about  two  miles  from 
the  mouth  of  the  creek,  and  near  the  site  of  the  present  town  of 
Wilmington,  Delaware. 

The  Swedes,  leaving  the  winter  bleakness  of  their  own  country,  and 
coming  to  the  beautiful  banks  of  the  South  River  in  the 
freshness  of  the  warm  spring,  found  in  the  new  land  even  vai  m  the 
more  than  the  fulfillment  of  their  hopes ;  yet  these  had  been 
raised  by  the  most  glowing  descriptions  at  home.1  A  point  just  above 
Cape  Henlopen  they  named  as  they  passed  "  Paradise  Point,"  and  as 
they  lay  at  anchor  in  the  broad  stream  by  their  newly -purchased  terri 
tory,  they  were  eager 
to  begin  a  "  planta 
tion."  Fort  Nassau 
was  only  fifteen  miles 
above,  and  it  needed 
but  little  time  for  ru 
mors  to  reach  the 
Dutch  garrison  there, 
of  the  arrival  of  two 
foreign  ships  within 
the  limits  of  New 
Netherland,  and  the 
mysterious  move 
ments  of  their  passen 
gers  upon  the  shore.  Messengers  were  dispatched  to  Minuit  to  ascer 
tain  his  intentions ;  he  had  only  come,  he  said,  for  wood  and  water, 
and  would  soon  pursue  his  voyage  to  the  West  Indies.  The  story 
was  distrusted  from  the  first,  and  when  the  Swedes  began  to  make  ua 
small  garden"  near  the  bank  —  an  operation  which  was  clearly  not 
a  part  of  a  West  India  voyage  —  their  commander  was  compelled 
gradually  to  disclose  his  true  purpose.  The  Crriffin  even  made  a 
trading  voyage  as  far  as  Fort  Nassau,  where,  though  forced  to  put 
about,  her  captain  refused  to  show  his  commission  at  the  demand  of 
the  Dutch.  But  he  announced  that  the  Swedes  meant  also  to  build  a 
fort  on  the  river,  and  that  their  right  to  do  so  was  quite  as  good  as 
that  of  the  Dutch  Company. 

The  people  at  Fort  Nassau  sent  intelligence  of  the  matter  to  Kieft 
at  Manhattan.    The  director,  with  great  promptness,  brought  Digmay  of 
'  to  bear  upon  the  Swedes  a  sounding  proclamation,  asserting  *nd  procil'- 
the  right  of  the  West  India  Company  to  the  banks  of  the   gfjton  of 
South   River,   and  warning   Minuit,    in   most   solemn  and  May'1638- 
weighty  terms,  not  to  attempt  intrusion,  assuring  him  that  the  Nether- 

1  See  the  Argonautica  Gustaviana,  quoted  by  Bancroft,  vol.  ii.,  p.  284. 


Costume  of  Swedes. 


468  THE    SWEDES   ON   THE   DELAWARE.       [CHAP.  XVII. 

lands  would  protect  their  rights  "  in  a  manner  that  should  appear  most 
advisable."  l 

Minuit,  himself  a  Dutchman,  and  late  the  director  of  the  Company 
at  New  Amsterdam,  knew  the  exact  weight  of  metal  which 
the  Swedish  this  sort  of  ordnance  carried.  He  went  on  with  the  building 
of  a  fort  and  trading-house,  and  when  he  had  finished  them 
and  had  seen  trade  with  the  Indians  fairly  established,  he  placed  a 
garrison  of  twenty-four  men  in  possession,  well  supplied  and  armed, 
and  then,  without  the  least  regard  to  the  continued  protests  of  the 
Dutch,  sent  the  vessels  home  well  laden,  to  return  with  farther 
additions  to  the  little  colony.2  The  valor  and  firmness  displayed  by 
Kieft  in  proclamation  and  letter  were  admirable,  but  he  was  careful 
not  to  send  anybody  to  disturb  the  well-fortified  Swedes.  Nor  was 
he  less  loud  in  his  complaints  to  the  Directors  in  Holland  ;  but  these 
passed  almost  unheeded,  for  any  design  of  Sweden  at  home  or  abroad 
was  not  to  be  lightly  meddled  with.  For  more  than  a  year  all  went 
well  with  the  colony  at  Fort  Christina  ;  its  trade  prospered  so  that 
it  did  "thirty  thousand  florins  injury"  to  that  of  New  Netherland,3 
and  the  little  plantation  about  the  fort  began  to  have  the  appear 
ance  of  prosperity  and  permanence.  It  was  only  with  the  winter  of 
1639-40,  when  supplies  had  begun  to  run  low,  and  no  aid  had  been 
sent  from  home,  that  their  first  trials  came  upon  the  Swedish  settlers. 
To  such  straits  were  they  brought,  that  they  at  one  time  determined 
to  give  up  their  enterprise,  and  go  to  the  Dutch  at  Manhattan  to  seek 
homes  or  a  passage  to  their  fatherland.  But  the  spring  brought  help. 
This  came  not  only  from  their  own  people,  but  from  the  Nether 
lands  also.  Those  who  had  returned  in  the  vessels  had 
to  the  new  spread  far  and  wide  the  praises  of  the  beautiful  region  they 
had  visited,  its  fitness  for  colonization,  and  the  promise  for 
the  future  to  those  who  should  be  its  first  possessors.  Recruits  came 
with  the  summer  of  1639,  from  different  parts  of  Sweden  and  Finland  ; 
several  shrewd  Netherlander,  to  whom  the  confused  state  of  the  col 
ony  at  Manhattan  was  anything  but  attractive,  gained  permission  to 
take  out  parties  to  the  South  River  under  Swedish  protection.  The 
opening  of  New  Netherland,  just  at  this  time,  to  greater  freedom  of 
trade,  caused  some  of  these  to  change  their  minds,  but  enough  per 
severed  to  make  a  small  Dutch  colony,  which  the  Swedish  govern 
ment  decreed  must  be  at  least  four  or  five  German  miles  from  Fort 
Christina. 

1  Acrelins,  as  cited,  p.  409  ;  O'Callaghan,  vol.  i.,  p.  191. 

2  An  ambiguous  passage  in  a  letter  of  Kieft,  dated  in  July  of  this  year,  has  led  some 
writers  to  believe  that  Minuit  himself  went  back  at  this  time,  but  it  is  clear  that  he  did  not. 
Compare  Acrelius,  as  cited,  p.  410. 

3  Brodhead,  vol.  i.,  p.  319. 


1641.] 


PROSPERITY   AT   FORT   CHRISTINA. 


469 


The  new  emigrants  —  the  Dutch  being  under  the  command  of  one 
Joost  de  Bogaerdt,  who  drew  a  salary  from  the  Swedish  government — 
sailed  for  America  late  in  the  winter.  Their  arrival  was  hailed  with 
delight.  Abundant  supplies,  a  great  addition  to  their  numbers,  and 
news  from  home,  where  they  had  almost  believed  their  undertaking 
had  fallen  into  complete  neglect,  dispelled  in  a  moment  the  despair 
of  the  colonists  at  Fort  Christina.  Everything  took  on 
the  appearance  of  prosperity ;  the  Dutch  settlers,  establish-  atTort"  y 
ing  themselves  a  little  to  the  south  of  the  Swedes,  began  to 
build  dwellings  and  plant  their  crops  in  the  pleasant  valley,  a  happier 
contrast  than  they  knew  to  their  countrymen  at  Manhattan,  whose 
mistaken  government  was  at  this  moment  bringing  upon  them  a  des 
olating  war.  The  summer  passed  away  without  a  check  to  their  pro 
gress  ;  the  Indian  trade  on  the  South  River  passed  almost  entirely 
into  their  hands  ;  their  crops  were  good,  and  the  fort  was  not  mo 
lested  by  the  New  Netherlanders,  Kieft  having  concluded  to  raise 
the  siege  of  proclamations  and  treat  them  with  neighborly  civility. 
In  the  autumn  a  new  band  of  colonists  arrived  at  the  fort  with  further 
supplies,  tools,  and  conveniences,  under  the  charge  of  Peter  Hollaen- 
dare.  Later  still  in  the  season  came  two  or  three  more  vessels,  each 
crowded  with  passen 
gers  ;  while  many  who 
wished  to  leave  Sweden 
had  been  unable  to  come 
for  want  of  room,  and 
were  waiting  for  other 
ships  to  sail.  The  third 
winter  at  the  new  col 
ony  passed  away  with 
out  bringing  the  suffer 
ing  that  had  been  felt 
in  those  before  it  ;  with 
the  next  spring  and  sum 
mer  emigrants  contin 
ued  to  join  the  growing  settlement.  During  this  summer  (1641) 
Minuit  died  at  the  fort  he  had  founded,  regretted  by  the  Swedes, 
whom  he  had  served  most  faithfully,  and  whose  enterprise  he  had 
made  successful  where  one  of  less  experience  would  probably  have 
failed.  Hollaendare,  a  Swede,  succeeded  him  in  the  governorship. 

Even  the  presence  of  two  claimants  in  the  valley  of  the  South 
River  could  not  protect  it  long  from  the  interference  of  the  English, 
who,  De  Vries  said  long  before,  "  thought  everything  belonged  to 
them."  As  early  as  1640  a  New  England  captain  is  reported  to  have 


Early  Swedish  Church. 


470  THE    SWEDES   ON  THE   DELAWARE.        [CHAP.  XVII. 

bought  some  land  on  the  South  River  from  the  Indians,  who  were  often 
ready  to  sell  the  same  lands  to  as  many  people  as  possi- 

The  English 

on  the  south  ble.1  Early  the  next  spring  a  number  of  New  England  colo 
nists,  under  the  command  of  Robert  Cogswell,  sailed  from 
Connecticut  for  the  South  River,  seeking  a  less  rigorous  climate  and 
more  fertile  soil,  in  a  region  of  whose  beauties  they  had  heard  so  much. 
At  Manhattan,  where  they  lay  for  a  few  days  on  their  way,  one  of 
Kieft's  proclamations  was  aimed  point-blank  at  them,  warning  them 
against  encroaching  upon  New  Netherland  territory.  With  a  vague 
assurance  that  he  meant  only  to  settle  upon  unclaimed  lands,  the 
New  Englander  sailed  on,  and  had  no  trouble  in  finding  Indians 
ready  to  sell  him  land.  The  English  made  quick  work  with  this,  as 
with  other  settlements  within  Dutch  limits ;  and  before  the  end  of 
the  summer  they  had  planted  corn  and  built  trading-posts  on  Varck- 
en's  Kill  (now  Salem  Creek,  in  New  Jersey),  and  on  the  Schuylkill, 
near  its  mouth.  Both  posts  prospered,  and  New  Haven  took  them 
under  special  protection,  as  colonies  connected  with  the  town.  By 
the  time  Kieft  fully  realized  what  had  been  done,  it  was  too  late  in 
the  year  for  action. 

The  coming  of  the  English  was  not  less  disagreeable  to  the  Swedes 
The  English  than  to  the  Dutch ;  and  when,  in  the  spring  of  1642,  Kieft 
?heVs^uthm  instructed  Jansen,  the  commissary  at  Fort  Nassau,  to  expel 
the  intruders,  and  to  maintain  on  the  South  River  "  the  rep 
utation  of  their  High  Mightinesses,"  the  people  at  Fort  Christina  gave 
them  their  energetic  aid.  The  English  for  once  yielded  without  re 
sistance,  were  taken  as  prisoners  to  Manhattan,  and  thence  despatched 
to  their  homes.  Their  appeals  for  damages,  and  their  request  that 
the  New  Haven  authorities  should  retaliate,  were  alike  disregarded. 

During  the  spring  of  1648,  there  arrived  at  Fort  Christina  an 
Arrival  of  officer  who  was  to  play  a  distinguished  part  in  the  Swedish 
pnnTzlTFort  colony.  Hollaendare  had  retired  from  his  post  as  governor, 
Christina.  an(j  jojm  printz5  a  cavalry  lieutenant  in  the  Swedish  ser 
vice,  was  sent  out  to  succeed  him.  De  Vries  gives  a  concise  descrip 
tion  of  this  burly  officer,  by  saying  that  he  was  a  man  "  of  brave 
size,"  weighing  somewhat  more  than  four  hundred  pounds,  and  he 
"doubted  not"  that  the  Swede  drank  three  drinks  at  every  meal.2 

He  was  evidently  looked  upon  as  a  somewhat  formidable  person, 
and  was  endowed  with  a  violence  of  temper  quite  in  keeping  with 
his  physical  proportions  and  his  free  mode  of  living.  Two  Swedish 
war-vessels,  the  Swan  and  the  Charitas,  and  a  merchant  ship,  the 

1  Brodhead,  vol.  i.,  p.  321,  cites  authorities  for  this  report;  its  truth  is  by  no  means  cer 
tain.     See  O'Callaghan,  vol.  i.,  p.  232. 

2  De  Vries,  N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  New  Series,  vol.  i.,  p.  273. 


1643.]  ADMINISTRATION   OF   GOVERNOR  PRINTZ.  471 

Fama,  accompanied  him  to  New  Sweden,  as  the  colony  was  now 
called ;  they  brought  out  a  large  number  of  colonists ;  and  the  new 
administration  began  with  something  of  the  dignity  and  ceremony  of 
an  older  government.  Printz  established  himself  at  the  island  of 
Tenacong  (the  present  Tinicum,  about  twelve  miles  below  Philadel 
phia),  built  a  fort  there  —  the  "  New  Gottenburg  " —  and  a  house  of 
no  mean  pretensions  for  the  time  and  place,  which  he  called  "  Printz 
Hall."  A  part  of  the  colonists  remained  at  Fort  Christina  ;  the  rest 
clustered  about  the  new  fort  and  the  governor's  mansion  ;  and  at 
both  points  prosperous  farms  and  orchards  were  soon  in  flourishing 
condition.  According  to  the  instructions  to  Printz,  amicable  relations 
were,  if  possible,  to  be  kept  up  with  the  Dutch,  both  at  Fort  Nassau 
and  elsewhere ;  but  he  was  to  monopolize  the  Indian  trade  of  the 
river  as  far  as  he  could,  and  his  fort  was  to  be  so  built  as  to  com 
mand  the  stream,  and  be  able  to  stop  all  passing  vessels. 

The  home  government  had  made  a  very  large  appropriation  (about 
two  million  rix  dollars  annually)  for  the  support  of  the  col- 

J '  r  r  .  Administra- 

ony,  and  agreed  to  furnish  it  with  soldiers  for  protection ; l  tion  of 
the  settlers  had  ample  resources  and  were  energetic  and 
industrious ;  and  they  had  chosen  one  of  the  best  positions  on  the 
coast.  The  material  prosperity  of  the  people  was  unquestionable  and 
for  a  pioneer  colony  exceptional.  Their  neighbors,  however,  found 
some  fault  with  its  moral  condition,  for  De  Vries  records  that  "  neither 
there  nor  in  Virginia  was  intoxication  or  incontinence  punished  with 
whipping ; "  but  this  lenity  does  not  seem  to  have  led  to  any  grave 
disorders,  and  probably  the  motley  population  of  Manhattan  would 
not  have  appeared  to  advantage  in  a  comparison  with  the  peaceful 
Swedes.  Swedish  interests  on  the  river  were  at  any  rate  cared  for  in 
a  way  that  must  have  fully  satisfied  Printz's  superiors.  His  fort  at 
Tinicum  compelled  every  vessel,  of  whatever  nationality,  to  strike  her 
colors  as  she  passed,  and  no  trade  was  permitted  that  did  not  pay  due 
tribute. 

Notwithstanding  affairs  were  conducted  in  this  high-handed  way 
by  the  new  comers,  the  Dutch  hesitated  to  oppose  them  except  by 
the  usual  protests  and  empty  threats.  Printz  was  not  a  man  likely 
to  be  daunted  by  these.  When  George  Lamberton,  the  New  Ha 
ven  Englishman  who  had  sent  out  Cogswell's  unsuccessful  expedition 
to  the  South  River,  persisted  in  trading  there,  the  Swedish 

.      ,  ,    ,  .  i  ,    rr«-     •  j     •  Energetic 

governor  induced  him  to  come  ashore  at  linicum,  and  im-   measures  of 
prisoned  him  and  two  of  his  crew.     He  tried  to  persuade  or 
bribe  one  of  the  sailors  to  accuse  the  captain  of  inciting  the  Indians 
to  attack  the    Swedes.      When  the  sailor  refused,  Printz  put  him  in 

1  Hazard,  Annal.  Penn.,  apud  Brodhead,  vol.  i.,  p.  379. 


472 


THE    SWEDES    ON   THE   DELAWARE.         [CHAP.  XVII. 


irons,  and  stamped  up  and  down  the  fort,  "  a  man  very  furious  and 
passionate,  cursing  and  swearing,  and  also  reviling  the  English  of  New 
Haven  as  runagates."  1  When  called  upon  by  the  New  Englanders, 
after  Lamberton's  release, to  give  satisfaction  for  these  "foul  injuries  " 
and  "  damages,"  he  sent  a  letter  to  Massachusetts  denying  the  whole 
story.  This  was  in  the  autumn  of  1643.  When  another  New  Eng 
land  vessel  (a  pinnace  sent  out  from  Boston),  came  to  the  Delaware 
in  the  spring  of  the  next  year,  the  Swedes  and  the  Dutch  at  Fort 
Nassau  united  in  refusing  to  permit  her  to  trade  in  the  river,  and  sent 
each  a  boat  to  prevent  it.  The  English  soon  learned  that  it  was  not 


Printz  and  the   Sailor. 


so  easy  to  have 
their  own  way  on 
the  Delaware  as  it 
had  been  on  the 
banks  of  the  Connecticut. 
Printz  nevertheless  was 
kindly  and  good  natured 
when  trade  was  not  in 
question,  for  in  October  he  res 
cued  two  Boston  men  from  the 
Indians,  who  had  treacherously 
boarded  an  English  vessel  that  entered  the  bay  and  killed  or  captured 
all  her  crew.  The  rescued  men  he  sent  to  New  Haven. 

In  1645,  Jan  Jansen,  long  the  commissary  at  the  Dutch  Fort  Nas 
sau,  was  peremptorily  removed  by  Kieft,  because  of  well-sustained 
accusations  of  dishonesty  and  incompetence,  and  one  Andreas  Hudde 
was  appointed  in  his  place.  It  is  very  possible  that  a  part  of  Jansen's 
neglect  of  duty  lay  in  his  easy  submission  to  the  Swedes ;  at  all  events, 
his  successor  seems  to  have  understood  his  obligations  to  protect  the 
river-trade,  as  binding  him  to  take  a  different  course.  An  opportu 
nity  to  make  issue  with  the  rival  governor  was  not  long  wanting. 
1  Winthrop,  vol.  ii.,  p.  130,  sqq. 


1646.]         DIFFICULTIES  BETWEEN  DUTCH  AND   SWEDES.  473 

In  the  summer  of  1646,  a  New  Amsterdam  trading  vessel,  approaching 
the  right  bank  of  the  mouth  of  the  Schuylkill,  was  sharply  Dlgputes  be_ 
ordered  off  by  the  Swedish  officer  of  the  post  near  by,  and  I^Taes  and 
was  forced  to  obey.  The  captain  of  the  vessel  appealed  to  Dutch- 
Hudde ;  but  when  that  officer  came  in  person  to  investigate  the  com 
plaint,  he  was  commanded  to  "  leave  the  territory  of  the  queen  "  with 
as  little  ceremony  as  had  been  used  in  the  first  case.  He  retired  to 
Fort  Nassau  in  great  indignation,  and  an  angry  interchange  of  messages 
and  letters  followed,  during  which  Printz  requested  Hudde  to  define 
precisely  the  rights  which  the  Dutch  believed  they  had  in  the  neigh 
boring  region.  Hudde  replied  rather  vaguely  to  the  Swedish  messen 
gers  ;  and  Printz,  who  had  none  of  the  patience  of  a  diplomat,  wrote 
decisively  to  the  captain  of  the  Manhattan  vessel  that  he  must  leave 
the  river  or  lose  ship  and  cargo,  conveying  his  threat,  however,  in 
courteous  language,  and  laying  all  the  blame  on  the  Fort  Nassau  com 
missary.1  The  captain  wisely  obeyed,  and  sailed  away. 

This  dispute,  however,  was  only  the  prelude  to  further  difficulties. 
Later  in  the  summer  Hudde  found  himself  prevented  from  Further  ^. 
going  to  the  falls  at  Sankikan  (Trenton),  whither  he  had  flculties- 
been  ordered  by  Kieft  on  an  exploring  expedition.  Printz  had  per 
suaded  the  Indians  to  stop  him,  making  them  believe  that  the  Dutch 
designed  to  attack  the  tribes  of  that  region,  and  build  a  fort  upon  their 
land.  The  Dutch  commissary  was  furious  but  discreet,  and  gave  up 
his  expedition.  Nor  did  the  interference  of  Printz  cease  here.  When 
Hudde,  at  Kieft's  command,  attempted  to  begin  a  new  settlement  on 
some  land  he  had  bought  near  the  present  site  of  Philadelphia,  a 
Dutch  mile  or  more  to  the  north  of  Fort  Nassau,  on  the  west  shore 
of  the  river,  Printz  sent  a  deputy  to  prevent  it ;  the  officer  tore  down 
the  Dutch  arms,  and  used  "  in  an  insolent  and  hostile  manner 
these  threatening  words  :  '  that  although  it  had  been  the  colors  of 
the  Prince  of  Orange  that  were  hoisted  there,  he  would  have  thrown 
these  too  under  his  feet ; '  besides  many  bloody  menaces."  2  This 
was  followed  up  by  a  formal  letter  from  Printz,  demanding  that 
Hudde  should  at  once  "  discontinue  the  injuries  of  which  he  had  been 
guilty  against  the  Royal  Majesty  in  Sweden  "  —  injuries  which  he  had 
committed  "  without  showing  the  least  respect  to  Her  Royal  Majesty's 
magnificence,  reputation,  and  highness  ; "  and  the  document  so  bela 
bored  the  commissary  with  protests  against  his  "  gross  violence  "  and 
"gross  conduct,"  that  it  is  plain  to  see  the  choleric  Swede  believed 
himself  to  be  a  most  patient,  innocent,  and  abused  governor. 

Hudde  was  naturally  enough  astonished  at  the  tone  of  this  despatch. 

1  Hudde's  report,  in  N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  New  Series,  vol.  ii.,  p.  431. 

2  Hudde's  report. 


474  THE    SWEDES    ON   THE    DELAWARE.         [CHAP.  XVII. 

He  returned  an  answer  in  the  most  exaggerated  form  of  Dutch  cour 
tesy,  to  "  the  Noble  Governor  De  Heer  John  Printz,"  addressing  him 
as  "  Sir  Governor."  Yet  the  letter  was  not  without  firmness,  and 
contained  a  great  deal  of  excellent  counsel.  After  protesting  that  he 
had  done  everything  in  his  power  to  promote  "  a  good  correspondence 
and  mutual  harmony,"  he  appealed  to  the  Swede  to  do  likewise.  "  I 
confide  that  it  is  your  Honour's  intention  to  act  in  the  same  manner  — 
at  least  from  the  consideration  that  we  who  are  Christians  will  not 
place  ourselves  as  a  stumbling-block  or  laughing-stock  to  those  savage 
heathens." 

The  good  sense  and  moderation  of  this  answer  were  of  no  avail. 
When  the  sergeant  by  whom  Hudde  sent  it  approached  the  Swedish 
governor,  who  stood  before  the  door  of  "  Printz  Hall,"  with  several 

D  '  * 

servants  and  others  about  him,  the  burly  officer  paid  no  heed  to 
the  messenger's  courteous  "  good  morning,"  but  took  Hudde's  de 
spatch  from  his  hand  without  ceremony,  and  threw  it  unopened  toward 
one  of  his  attendants,  telling  him  to  "  take  care  of  it."  Turning 
away  he  went  to  meet  some  Englishmen  just  arrived  from  New  Eng 
land,  paying  no  further  attention  to  the  sergeant  or  his  letter.  The 
Dutch  soldier  waited  patiently  for  a  considerable  time,  and  then  hum 
bly  asked  for  an  answer ;  whereupon  the  governor  became  furiously 
angry,  and  seizing  the  unfortunate  sergeant  with  all  the  strength 
of  his  huge  frame,  threw  him  violently  out  of  doors,  afterward 
"  taking  a  gun  in  his  hand  from  the  wall,  to  shoot  him,  as  he  imag 
ined." 

After  this  positive  breach  of  friendly  relations,  nothing  but  hostility 
could  exist  between  the  Dutch  and  Swedes  on  the  South  River.  Dur 
ing  the  short  time  that  was  left  of  Kieft's  administration  at  Manhat 
tan,  petty  acts  of  enmity  and  retaliation  marked  all  the  intercourse 
between  the  settlements  of  the  two  nations.  "John  Printz  leaves 
nothing  untried  to  render  us  suspected,"  wrote  Hudde  a  little  later, 
"  as  well  among  the  savages  as  among  the  Christians  —  yea,  often  is 
conniving  when  the  subjects  of  the  Company,  as  well  freemen  as 
servants,  when  arriving  at  the  place  where  he  resides,  are  in  most 
unreasonable  manner  abused,  so  that  they  are  often,  on  returning 
home,  bloody  and  bruised."  The  Dutch  trade  with  the  Indians  had 
passed  almost  entirely  out  of  their  control ;  the  English  were  kept 
away  with  an  energy  they  would  never  have  experienced  at  the  hands 
of  the  Fort  Nassau  garrison.  At  the  moment  when  Kieft 

.Prosperity 

of  New  swe-  gave  up  his  misused  power  into  the  hands  of  his  successor  at 

Manhattan,  the  Swedes  were  in  all  respects  the  lords  of  the 

South  River  valley  ;  and  as  the  power  of  their  rivals  declined,  they 

prospered  and  grew  strong.     Large  reinforcements  of  settlers  and  sol- 


1635.]  PROSPERITY   OF   NEW   SWEDEN.  475 

diers  came  out  to  them ;  convicts  and  malefactors,  some  of  whom  had 
at  first  been  sent  out  as  servants  to  the  colonists,  gave  way  to  the  bet 
ter  class,  under  whose  control  they  did  good  work  on  farms  and  build 
ings  ; 1  the  little  town  at  Tinicum,  with  its  manor-house  and  its  church 
where  the  Reverend  John  Campanius  preached  on  Sundays,  had  an 
appearance  very  different  from  that  of  the  now  desolated  and  unfortu 
nate  New  Amsterdam.  When  New  Netherland  was  at  its  lowest  point 
of  misfortune  and  mismanagement,  New  Sweden  had  reached  a  height 
of  prosperity  which  was,  however,  to  disappear  in  its  turn  in  the  ad 
vance  of  a  stronger  race. 

1  Thomas  Campanius  Holm's  Short  Description,  already  cited,  p.  73.  The  statement 
made  in  the  same  place  about  the  sending  back  of  subsequent  bands  of  convicts  is,  like  many 
of  this  author's  statements,  very  improbable.  His  translator  admits  a  considerable  mingling 
»f  fable  in  Holm's  work,  and  his  account  is  only  trustworthy  where  confirmed  by  others. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

VIRGINIA   AND   MARYLAND. 

JEALOUSY  OP  JAMES  I.  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  COMPANY.  —  EARL  OF  SOUTHAMPTON 
ELECTED  TREASURER. — PROGRESS  OF  THE  COLONY.  —  MASSACRE  OF  1622. — DIS 
SENSIONS  IN  THE  LONDON  COUNCIL.  —  CHARTER  OF  THE  COMPANY  TAKEN  AWAY. 
—  RAPID  SUCCESSION  OF  GOVERNORS  OF  THE  COLONY.  —  LORD  BALTIMORE,  AND 
HIS  VISIT  TO  VIRGINIA.  —  CHARTER  OF  MARYLAND.  —  CECIL  CALVERT'S  COL 
ONY.  —  ITS  LANDING  IN  MARYLAND.  —  THE  FIRST  TOWN.  —  ST.  MARY'S  BLUFF. — 
PURCHASE  FROM  THE  INDIANS.  —  THE  FIRST  CATHOLIC  CHAPEL.  —  FRIENDLY  RE 
LATIONS  WITH  THE  INDIANS. 

WHEN  the  regular  meeting  for  the  election  of  officers  of  the  Vir 
ginia  Company  was  held  in  1620,  a  message  was  received  from  the 
king  naming  four  persons,  one  of  whom  he  wished  to  be  chosen  its  treas 
urer  for  the  ensuing  year.  It  was  a  despotic  act,  not  easy  to  enforce, 
on  the  one  hand;  hard  to  obey,  and  difficult  to  evade  on  the  other. 
Its  own  charter,  not  the  royal  wish,  was  the  law  for  the  Company. 
But  James  sincerely  believed  that  the  Council  of  the  Virginia 

James  I.  and  •>  .    .  , 

the  Virginia   adventurers  was  a  nursery  of  sedition,  and,  in  a  measure,  he 

Company.  .         J 

was  unquestionably  right.  Among  the  many  persons  who 
were  busy  with  schemes  for  peopling  the  new  country,  the  larger 
number  were  moved,  some  by  selfish  motives,  others  by  broad  com 
mercial  and  patriotic  purposes.  But  besides  these,  the  thinking 
men  of  the  time,  —  those  who  valued  religious  and  civil  freedom  ;  who 
contended  and  meant  to  contend  against  tyranny  at  home,  so  long  as 
the  struggle  was  of  any  avail ;  who  looked  to  the  future  of  England 
with  apprehension,  and  were  sustained  by  the  hope  that  a  new  Eng 
land  might  arise  across  the  sea  —  all  these  by  a  common  impulse  en 
gaged  in  some  scheme  of  American  colonization.  The  conviction  of 
the  king  was  neither  a  prejudice  nor  a  mistake,  but  an  instinct. 
However  much  it  might  please  him  to  be  busy  about  the  govern 
ment  of  a  colony,  he  watched  with  jealous  eyes  any  body  of  men  ac 
customed  to  congregate  together,  lest  treason  against  the  royal  prerog 
ative  should  be  hatched  among  them.  The  Council  of  the  Virginia 
Company  attended  to  its  own  affairs ;  but  there  were  men  at  that 
board  whose  influence,  in  Parliament  and  out  of  it,  James  dreaded,  not 
without  reason.  The  nominations  he  now  made  were  only  the  begin 
ning  of  more  serious  aggressions. 


1621.]  CONDITION   OF  THE  COLONY.  477 

The  Company  was  happy  to  effect  a  compromise.     The  king  con 
sented  not  to  insist  upon  the  election  of  one  of  his  own  candidates  ; 
the  Company  so  far  gratified  his  wish  as  to  quietly  drop  the  man  whom 
he  held  to  be  the  most  obnoxious.     "Choose  the  devil  if  you  will," 
said  James,  "  but  not  Sir  Edwin  Sandys."  l     The  treasurer  TheEarlof 
elected  was   the  Earl   of   Southampton  —  a   choice  hardly  ton  ^S 
more  acceptable  to  James  than  that  of  Sandys  himself,  but  treasurer- 
quite  as  advantageous  to  the  interests  of  the  Company.     For  the  pol 
icy  which  for  the  two  previous  years  had  been  so  successfully  pursued, 
Southampton  continued  ;  nor  was  the  active  management  of  the  affairs 
of  the  colony  by  Sandys  lost  to  it ;  he  still  remained  a  member  of 
the  Council,  and  frequently  acted  as  treasurer  —  always  virtually  the 
governor  —  by  Southampton's  appointment. 

So  vigorous  was  that  management  that  the  number  of  colonists  sent 
to  Virginia  during  the  years  1619,  1620,  and  1621,  was  three  thou 
sand  five  hundred  and  seventy,  more  than  half  of  the  whole  num 
ber  sent  by  the  Council  to  the  colony  since  Newport  landed  the  first 
company  at  Jamestown  in  1607.  During  the  same  period  fifty 
patents  were  granted  to  individuals  for  private  plantations,  and  these 
transported  at  their  own  charges  and  for  their  own  use  many  servants 
and  cattle  in  addition  to  those  sent  on  the  company's  account.  It  was 
not  the  fault  of  the  London  Council  that  the  establishment  of  a  more 
prosperous  community  did  not  follow  their  large  expenditure  of  labor, 
of  care,  and  of  money.  Had  there  been  nothing  in  the  character  of 
the  emigrants,  a  large  proportion  of  whom  were  persons  whose  expul 
sion  from  an  old  country  was  much  more  desirable  than  their  acquisi 
tion  in  a  new,  to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  progress  and  prosperity  of 
the  colony,  there  was  reason  enough  in  the  want  of  any  diversity  of 
industry  and  the  enforced  labor  of  bound  servants  in  one  direction,  to 
check  any  healthy  and  vigorous  growth.  All  the  energies  of  the  peo 
ple  continued  to  be  devoted  to  the  cultivation  of  the  one  great  staple, 
tobacco,  and  neither  the  constant  and  earnest  remonstrance  of  the 
Council  in  London,  nor  the  evidence  of  their  own  short-sightedness  in 
the  constant  threat  of  scarcity  of  food,  and  often  of  famine,  could  in 
duce  the  colonists  to  adopt  a  wiser  system.  The  colony  was  fourteen 
years  old  when  the  governor  wrote  to  the  Council  in  London —  "  as 
to  barley,  oats  and  the  best  peas  there  is  either  none,  or  a  very  small 
quantity  of  any  of  them  in  the  country." 

So  long  as  the  colony  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Council  their  efforts  to 
check  this  evil  were  never  pretermitted,  but  were  never  com-  cultivation 
pletely  successful.     The  law  to  regulate  the  planting  of  to-  oftobacco- 
bacco  was  made  more  stringent,  but  seems  to  have  continued,  for  the 

1  Neill's  History  of  the  Virginia  Company,  note  p.  185. 


478  VIRGINIA   AND   MARYLAND.  [CHAP.  XV11I. 

most  part,  a  dead  letter,  if  even  there  were  any  attempt  to  enforce  it. 
Provision  was  made  for  the  introduction  of  other  industries,  but  their 
growth,  if  they  had  any  at  all,  was  feeble.  The  soil  of  Virginia,  it 
was  thought,  was  peculiarly  suited*  to  the  vine  ;  cuttings,  accordingly, 
were  procured  from  time  to  time  in  large  quantities  from  France,  and 
sent  over  with  French  vine-dressers,  to  attend  to  their  cultivation. 
Wine,  it  was  hoped,  might  be  manufactured  in  large  quantities  ;  it 
was  certainly  begun,  for  in  the  minutes  of  the  proceedings  of  the 
Council  in  London,  a  single  pipe  is  spoken  of  as  having  been  sent  over, 

but  which,  unfortunately,  soured  on  the  passage.  Mulberry 
triesencour-  trees  and  silk-worms  were  introduced,  and  everything  done 

to  encourage  their  growth.  The  Council  were  sanguine,  and 
one  of  their  letters  enjoined  the  colonial  government  to  tolerate  no 
costly  apparel  except  such  silks  as  should  be  of  their  own  manufac 
ture.  This  early  application  of  the  principle  of  protection  to  home 
industries  the  colonial  officers  rather  resented  as  an  insult  to  the  rags 
of  the  ordinary  colonial  wear.  The  silk  making  was  no  more  flour 
ishing  than  the  manufacture  of  wine.  Glass-works  also  were  estab- 
The  first  lished,  with  skilled  workmen  from  Italy.  Iron-works  were 

started.  Ship-building  and  salt-making  were  encouraged. 
Dutch  workmen  were  sent  out  to  put  up  saw-mills  ;  —  there  was  not 
even  a  grist-mill  in  the  colony  till  1622. 

But  neither  the  exhortations  of  the  Council,  the  diligence  of  the 
colonial  authorities,  nor  the  amount  of  capital  employed,  could  bring 
the  culture  of  any  of  these  products  into  successful  competition  with 
the  growing  of  tobacco,  where  the  promise  of  speedy  wealth,  especially 
with  those  who  had  the  means  to  buy  the  cheap  labor  of  men  bound 
to  service  for  a  term  of  years,  was  so  much  greater.  Whatever  the 
prosperity  which  the  cultivation  of  this  single  staple  brought  to  the 
colony  in  after  times,  or  brought  rather  to  a  single  class,  it  is  evident 
that  its  earlier  struggles  were  greatly  prolonged  by  this  concentration 
of  its  energies  in  a  single  direction. 

Sir  George  Yeardley,  who,  with  Sandys,  had  given  to  the  colony,  in 
Themassa-  1619,  a  fresh  start  and  a  new  chance  of  success,  retired  from 
ere  of  1622.  £ne  governorship  in  1622,  and  was  succeeded  by  Sir  Francis 
Wyat.  The  Earl  of  Southampton  was  reflected  treasurer  from  year 
to  year  till  the  Company  lost  its  charter.  With  such  officers  the  col 
ony  would  have  continued  slowly  to  improve,  notwithstanding  all 
drawbacks  and  mistakes,  but  for  a  sudden  calamity  which,  in  the 
spring  of  1622,  well-nigh  ruined  it. 

For  several  years  there  had  been  almost  unbroken  peace  with  the 
Indians.  So  little  fear  was  there  of  any  interruption  of  this  tran 
quillity  that  the  English  had  heedlessly  scattered  themselves  about  the 


1622.J  MASSACRE    OF    1622.  479 

country  upon  isolated  farms,  or  in  small  settlements,  as  interest  or  in 
clination  led  them,  neglecting  all  precautions  of  armed  security,  per 
mitting  the  natives  to  come  and  go  familiarly  among  them  without 
question  and  without  thought  of  danger.  It  proved  a  fatal  confidence 
in  a  people  who  reckon  dissimulation  as  among  the  virtues,  and  the 
infliction  of  vengeance  as  the  noblest  use  of  courage. 

Since  the  death  of  Powhatan,  his  younger  brother,  Opechancanough, 
had  become  the  most  powerful  chief  in  Virginia.  His  hatred  of  the 
English  had  never  slept,  though  carefully  hidden  under  the  guise  of 
friendship  and  submission.  It  was  enough  to  keep  alive  his  anger 
and  his  desire  for  vengeance  that  these  stranger  people  still  remained 
in  a  country  to  which  he  considered  his  race  had  an  exclusive  right. 
But  he  had  other  provocations  in  the  memory  of  past  wrongs,  which 
the  English  had  forgotten,  or  which  they  believed  to  be  condoned 
for  in  treaties,  in  the  interchange  of  many  acts  of  good  fellowship, 
and  the  long  maintenance  of  kindly  and  familiar  relations.  His 
proposal  and  attempt  to  massacre  the  whole  colony  was,  indeed,  pre 
ceded  by  the  recent  killing  of  a  chief  by  two  boys  whose  master  he 
had  murdered  ;  but  as  this  brave  was  well  known  not  to  be  a  favorite 
of  Opechancanough,  though  popular  with  the  tribe,  his  death  was  the 
pretext  rather  than  the  cause  of  the  fearful  vengeance  which  fell  upon 
the  whites  on  the  22d  of  March,  1622. 

There  was  no  intimation  and  no  suspicion  of  the  intentions  of  the 
savages.  Not  one  of  the  thousands  who  dispersed  themselves  about 
the  country  to  visit  the  unsuspecting  English  with  sudden  death,  was 
moved  by  any  grateful  remembrance  of  favors  or  of  friendship  to 
warn  any  of  the  intended  victims  of  the  swift  calamity  which  was 
about  to  overtake  them.  On  the  appointed  morning,  everywhere,  in 
places  wide  apart,  the  savages,  sometimes  idly  loitering,  seemingly 
in  friendly  mood,  into  the  houses  of  the  whites,  sometimes 
creeping  stealthily  unseen  and  unheard  into  fields  where  men  ness  anden 
were  busily  at  work,  fell  upon  them  with  a  suddenness  and 
a  vigor  that  gave  no  time  for  defence,  or  prayer,  or  warning.  They 
spared  neither  age  nor  sex,  but  slaughtered  indiscriminately  men  and 
women,  parents  and  children,  in  a  riot  of  atrocity  and  cruelty  to  which 
the  North  American  Indian  never  so  completely  abandons  himself,  and 
never  so  fully  delights  in,  as  when  his  victim  is  utterly  defenceless 
and  entirely  at  his  mercy.  It  was  not  enough  merely  to  take  life, 
sometimes  even  at  the  table  where  bread  had  just  been  given  them  to 
eat.  With  a  horrid  pleasure  they  mutilated  and  disfigured  the  bodies 
they  had  already  put  beyond  help  or  harm,  —  wreaking  their  unspent 
rage  upon  the  dead  as  a  wild  beast  cries  over  and  tears  the  creature 
he  has  just  killed  and  seeks  to  find  life  in  it  that  he  may  kill  again. 


480 


VIRGINIA   AND  MARYLAND. 


[CHAP.  XVIII. 


When  this  cruel  work  was  finished,  the  savages  turned  to  the  posses 
sions  of  those  they  had  murdered.  Horses,  cattle,  and  swine  were 
destroyed  ;  houses  and  barns  set  on  fire.  Hatred  and  the  love  of  ven 
geance  made  them  prodigal  of  things  which  at  any  other  time  would 
have  been  most  precious  possessions.  They  left  nothing  pertaining  to 
the  whites  that  was  capable  of  destruction. 

The  attack  was  chiefly  upon  those  who  were  at  a  distance  from 
Jamestown  ;  but  there,  fortunately,  the  people  were  put  upon  their 
guard.  The  night  before  the  massacre  a  converted  Indian  was  told 
by  his  brother  of  the  proposed  extermination  of  the  English, 
and  was  urged  to  do  his  part  toward  it  by  the  murder  of  his 
master.  It  was  the  single  instance  so  far  as  there  is  any 
distinct  record  in  which  the  tie  of  blood  was  forgotten,  and  the  obli- 


The  colo 
nists 
warned. 


\L 


Taking  Warning  to  Jamestown. 


gation  of  kindly  relations  from  benefits  received  remembered.  The 
Indian  revealed  to  his  master  what  was  to  happen  on  this  morning. 
The  planter,  whose  place  was  opposite  Jamestown,  hurried  across  the 
river  before  daylight,  and  gave  warning  to  the  authorities  of  the  town. 
The  people  were  put  under  arms  ;  word  was  sent  to  all  the  planta 
tions  within  timely  reach  ;  and  the  larger  part  of  the  colonists  were 
thereby  saved,  for  the  Indians  made  no  attack  where  they  found  they 
were  to  encounter  an  armed  resistance.  Where  they  did  strike,  how 
ever,  the  blow  was  effectual.  The  number  killed,  probably  within  an 
hour,  was  about  three  hundred  and  fifty. 


1622.]        t  RESULTS    OF   THE  MASSACRE.  481 

In  the  inevitable  hostilities  which  followed,  the  people  were  com 
pelled  to  gather  into  the  larger  towns  for  mutual  defence.  The 
smaller  places,  like  Henrico  and  Charles  City,  were  abandoned ;  the 
scattered  plantations  were  deserted  ;  the  iron-works  and  the  glass 
works,  where  the  men  had  been  killed,  were  given  up;  vineyards  were 
destroyed  ;  cultivation  of  land  or  industry  of  any  sort  was  out  of  the 
question,  except  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  larger  bodies  of  pop 
ulation,  where  there  were  enough  for  constant  vigilance  and  armed 
defence.  Discouragement  and  almost  despair,  for  a  time,  paralysed 
the  unfortunate  colony. 

There  was  the  more  leisure  for  retaliation.  "  We  must  advise  you," 
wrote  the  Council  from  London,  "  to  root  out  from  being  any  Extennina- 
longer  a  people  so  cursed,  a  nation  ungrateful  to  all  bene-  J^ans*116 
fits,  and  uncapable  of  all  goodness."  "  A  sharp  revenge,"  urged- 
they  said  in  another  letter,  "  upon  the  bloody  miscreants,  even  to  the 
measure  that  they  intended  against  us,  the  rooting  them  out  for  being 
longer  a  people  upon  the  face  of  the  earth."  The  advice  was  not 
needed.  "  We  have  anticipated  your  desires,"  answered  the  governor 
and  council  of  Virginia,  "  by  setting  upon  the  Indians  in  all  places." 
To  the  Council's  reproaches  that  they  may  have  brought  this  calamity 
upon  themselves,  in  some  measure,  by  their  want  of  watchfulness, 
and  too  much  trust  in  the  savages,  they  pointedly  replied  by  remind 
ing  them  in  London  how,  from  the  beginning,  they  had  been  exhorted 
to  be  tender  with  the  Indians,  to  win  their  good- will  by  familiar  in 
tercourse,  to  entertain  them  kindly  in  their  homes,  and  induce  them 
to  become  members  of  their  families.  They  bettered,  if  that  were 
possible,  the  new  instruction.  They  destroyed  the  towns,  the  crops, 
the  fishing- weirs  of  the  natives  ;  shot  them,  as  they  would  shoot  wild 
beasts,  wherever  they  were  found  ;  tracked  them  with  bloodhounds  to 
their  hiding-places  in  the  forests,  and  trained  their  mastiffs  to  tear 
them  to  pieces.1 

The  Company  in  England  was  in  no  condition  to  bear  the  panic 
which  the  news  of  the  massacre  produced.  Its  differences 

,  Dissensions 

with  the  king,  and  the  struggle  between  the  two  factions,  led  m  the  Lon- 

.  don  Council. 

on  the  one  side  by  Southampton  and  bandys,  on  the  other 
by  the  Earl  of  Warwick  and  the  friends  of  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  the 
former  treasurer  of  the  Company,  were  pressing  hard  upon  it.  The 
king's  jealousy  of  those  members  of  the  "  country  party  "  who  be 
longed  to  the  Council  —  a  jealousy  nursed  by  Gondomar,  the  Spanish 
ambassador,  whose  influence  over  James  was  so  important  an  element 
in  the  politics  of  the  times, — the  controversy  in  regard  to  the  im 
portation  of  tobacco,  in  which  was  involved  the  prosperity  of  the  col- 

1  See  minutes  of  the  Council,  in  Neill's  History  of  the  Virginia  Company. 


482  VIRGINIA   AND  MARYLAND.  [CHAP.  XVIII. 

ony,  the  revenue  of  the  crown,  and  the  good-will  of  Spain ;  the  still 
unsettled  accounts  of  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  and  the  peculations  of  which 
he  was  suspected;  the  steady  disregard  of  the  Company,  year  after 
year,  of  the  wishes  of  the  king  in  the  choice  of  its  officers ;  the  appeals 
of  the  Council  to  Parliament  for  protection,  the  only  result  of  which 
was  to  enrage  James,  and  to  prompt  him  to  new  and  more  arbitrary 
measures  ;  —  all  these  for  the  next  two  years  threatened  the  existence 
of  the  Company,  and  at  length  destroyed  it. 

One  of  the  measures  to  which  the  Smith  faction  resorted  to  get  pos 
session  of  power,  was  to  procure  the  sending  of  a  commission 
of°heVcoi  by  the  Lords  of  the  Privy  Council  to  Virginia  to  look  into 
the  affairs  of  the  colony.  The  attempt  was  altogether  a 
failure,  for  the  colonists  both  privately  and  through  their  General  As 
sembly  vigorously  protested,  and  supported  their  protest  with  weighty 
facts,  against  putting  affairs  back  again  into  the  hands  from  which 
they  had  been  happily  rescued  when  Sir  Thomas  Smith  was  deposed 
from  the  treasury  ship.  The  king  was  only  the  more  exasperated 
that  he,  and  those  who  were  acting  in  accordance  with  his  wishes, 
should  be  thus  baffled. 

If  possession  of  the  Company  could  not  be  gained,  at  least  the  Com- 
Dissoiution  Panv  itself  could  be  destroyed.  A  movement  was  made  to 
gLiacIm-  procure  a  voluntary  surrender  of  its  charter,  but  this  was 
pany-  successfully  resisted.  The  Privy  Council,  by  order  of  the 

king,  again  interfered,  and  the  officers  of  the  Company  appealed  to 
Parliament  for  protection.  The  matter,  James  said,  was  already  in 
the  hands  of  his  Council ;  the  House  was  warned  to  let  it  alone.  The 
case  was  taken  to  the  Court  of  King's  Bench,  and  on  the  16th  of 
June,  1624,  the  patent  was  declared  by  the  chief  justice  to  be  null 
and  void.  The  government  of  the  colony  was  put  into  the  hands  of  a 
commission,  at  the  head  of  which  was  Sir  Thomas  Smith.  Whether 
there  was  any  real  obscurity  or  not  about  his  long  unsettled  accounts, 
they  were  liquidated,  probably,  on  whichever  side  the  balance  was, 
by  his  return  to  power. 

The  decision  of  the  court l  was,  of  course,  perfectly  arbitrary,  and 
no  better  law  or  reason  for  it  could  be  given  than  would  have  been 
equally  applicable  to  the  Plymouth  Company,  at  the  head  of  which  was 
the  Earl  of  Warwick.  But  it  suited  the  king  to  take  from  South 
ampton  and  Sandys  a  power  which  he  was  willing  to  leave  in  the  hands 
of  Warwick  and  Gorges.  There  was,  however,  no  such  complication 

1  For  authorities  as  to  this  final  disposition  of  the  Charter  of  the  Virginia  Company  — 
•\vhich  differs  from  Stith's  account  of  it  —  see  Neill's  History  of  the  Virginia  Company  in 
London.  Also  notes  to  The  Aspinwall  Papers,  vol.  iv.,  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Col.,  Fourth  Series, 
p.  71. 


1624.] 


SLOW   RECOVERY    OF   VIRGINIA   COLONY. 


483 


of  interests  —  as  of  the  tobacco  question  ;  the  accounts  of  Smith  ;  the 
unadjudicated  charges  against  Argall — in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other, 
and  happily  James  I.  was  dead  before  the  colony  of  Puritans  at  New 
Plymouth  was  thought  worthy  of  much  notice,  or  that  of  Massachu 
setts  Bay  had  an  existence. 

Meanwhile  the  colony  in  Virginia  recovered,  in  a  measure,  but  very 
slowly,  from  the  calamities  which  followed  the  massacre,  the 

.  ,.,.,.  „,    .  Slow  recoy- 

famine  consequent  upon  the  inability  to  produce  a  sumcient  ery  of  the 

.  .          colony  from 

crop  in  the  summer  of  1622,  and  the  sickness  and  mortality   its  misfor- 
which  attended  the  crowding  of  so  many  people  into  narrow 
quarters.      They  counted  it  as  chief  among  the  blessings  of  this  period 
that  the  Lord  delivered  into  their  hands  a  great  number  of  the  In- 


Deserted  Settlement. 

dians  ;  that  they  were  able  to  destroy  many  of  their  villages  and  their 
crops ;  to  take  from  them  large  quantities  of  corn  which  not  only 
served  to  satisfy  their  own  necessities,  but  the  want  of  it  starved  their 
savage  enemies.  These  hostilities  continued  almost  without  intermis 
sion,  and  the  whole  community  lived  for  years  in  a  state  of  perpetual 
panic. 

The  reestablishment  of  industry  and  security,  therefore,  was  of 
slow  growth,  and  it  was  long  before  the  colonists  ventured  to  return 
to  their  plantations,  or  ceased  to  rely  solely  for  safety  upon  the  pres 
ence  of  numbers.  In  the  progress  of  this  gradual  recovery  from  mis 
fortune  it  was  of  little  moment  to  them  which  faction  was  in  the  as- 


484  VIRGINIA   AND  MARYLAND.  [CHAP.  XVIII. 

cendancy  in  the  London  Council.  They  worked  out  as  well  as  they 
could  their  own  salvation,  and  it  was  years  before  the  transfer  of  the 
colony  from  the  control  of  a  corporation  to  that  of  the  king,  made 
much  change  in  their  condition. 

James  died  in  March,  1625,  and  his  son  had  little  leisure,  and  per- 
Death  of  haps  little  inclination  at  the  outset  of  his  reign,  to  think  of 
James  i.  a  distant  colony  which  had  for  him  none  of  that  absorbing 
interest  it  had  possessed  in  many  respects  for  his  father.  Wyat  still 
remained  as  governor  for  a  year  or  more  after  the  abrogation  of  the 
charter,  and  then  retiring,  at  his  own  request,  was  succeeded  by  Yeard- 
ley,  whose  fitness  for  the  post  had  been  proved  in  former  years.  The 
colony  during  this  period  seems  to  have  been  left  almost  entirely  un 
der  the  control  of  its  own  council  and  general  assembly,  and  when  in 
1627  Yeardley  died,  the  former  body  elected  Francis  West,  one  of 
their  own  number  and  a  brother  of  Lord  Delaware,  to  succeed  him. 
He  probably  retired  in  the  course  of  the  year,  and  Dr.  John  Potts,  who 
was  in  the  hardly  less  important  post  of  physician  to  the  colony,  was 
chosen  its  chief  magistrate  in  West's  place.1  The  administration  of 
Potts  was  put  an  end  to,  the  year  after  his  election,  by  the 
royal  gov-  arrival  of  the  first  royal  governor,  Sir  John  Harvey,  who, 

ernor.  ... 

though  a  resident  of  Virginia,  seems  to  have  been  prevented 
by  absence  in  England  from  assuming  the  office  earlier.  He  entered 
upon  its  duties  under  a  load  of  unpopularity,  acquired  as  one  of 
James's  commissioners  in  1624,  which,  so  long  as  his  administration 
lasted,  he  did  nothing  to  diminish. 

Potts's  term,  however,  had  not  expired  when  Lord  Baltimore  ar 
rived  at  Jamestown  from  Newfoundland,  where  he  had  a 
Baltimore  to  colony  called  Ferryland.     His  coming  opened  a  new  chapter 

Jamestown.  _-..       .     .       ...  _.  ..  .,     .  .        , 

in  Virginia  history.  The  governor  and  council  inquired  — 
not,  apparently,  in  any  inhospitable  mood,  but  with  an  entirely  nat 
ural  desire  to  learn  —  the  intention  of  so  distinguished  a  visitor,  who, 
they  probably  knew,  had  not  come  to  Virginia  from  mere  idle  curiosity. 
Baltimore's  plan  was  to  found  a  colony,  having  already  petitioned  the 
king  to  make  a  grant  of  lands  to  him  somewhere  in  Virginia.  But 
as  he  seems  to  have  been  disposed  to  remain  for  a  time  at  Jamestown 
with  his  family,  the  government  tendered  to  him  the  usual  oath  of 
supremacy  and  allegiance.  They  knew,  no  doubt,  he  was  a  Catho 
lic  ;  they  felt  that,  in  all  their  tribulations  and  misfortunes,  in  one 
thing,  at  least,  they  had  been  happy  —  to  use  their  own  words  —  "in 
the  freedom  of  our  religion  which  we  have  enjoyed,  and  that  no  Pa 
pists  have  been  suffered  to  settle  their  abode  amongst  us."2  They  did 

1  Burk's  History  of  Virginia,  vol.  ii.,  p.  23. 

2  See  Memorial  to  the  Lords  of   the  Privy  Council,  iu  Neill's  English  Colonization  of 
America,  from  Sainsbury's  Collection  of  State  Papers. 


GEORGE    CALVERT,  LORD    BALTIMORE. 
{From  a  copy  of  the  original  portrait  by  Daniel  Mytens.) 


1629.] 


LORD  BALTIMORE   IN   VIRGINIA. 


485 


not  mean  to  forego,  if  they  could  help  it,  so  great  a  blessing.  If  this 
distinguished  Catholic  nobleman  —  who,  should  he  settle  among  them, 
would  bring  other  papists  with  him  —  objected  to  taking  the  oath, 
then,  they  may  have  reflected,  they  would  be  happily  rid  of  Balti 
him.  Their  oath  he  declined  to  take,  though  not  unwilling 
to  subscribe  to  one  of  his  own  composing,  which  he  thought  j^ance^nd^ 
would  answer  the  purpose  quite  as  well.  Their  answer  was  8UPremacy- 
a  request  that  he  would  take  shipping  for  England  by  the  earliest 
opportunity.  He  complied  so  far  as  to  quit  the  colony,  but  before  re 
turning  to  England  he  made  a  voyage  of  observation  to  Chesapeake 


imore 

the  *° 


Scenery  in  the  Chesapeake. 

Bay,  where  Lady  Baltimore  had  made  a  visit  the  year  before.1  His 
family  he  left  behind  him  at  Jamestown ;  and  that  he  returned  there 
afterward  from  England  to  take  them  away  there  is  this  interesting 
bit  of  evidence  in  the  colonial  records  of  Virginia :  "  Thomas  .Tindall 
to  be  pilloried  two  hours  for  giving  my  Lord  Baltimore  the  lie  and 
threatening  to  knock  him  down."  2 

George  Calvert,  created  baron  of  Baltimore  a  few  weeks  only  be 
fore  the  death  of  James  I.,  was  not  a  stranger  to  the  Virginia  Colony. 
He  had  been  a  member  of  the  London  Council ;  through  him,  as  sec 
retary  of  state,  the  wishes  of  the  king  were  conveyed  when  he  sent 
to  that  body  a  list  of  persons,  one  of  whom  he  desired  should  be 
chosen  treasurer  in  place  of  Sandys.  As  a  devoted  servant  of  his 

1  Note  to  The  Aspinwall  Papers.     Bozman's  History  of  Maryland. .  McSherry's  History 
of  Maryland.     Neill,  in  his  English  Colonization,  says,  that  this  lady  was  not  Lord  Balti 
more's  wife,  but  gives  no  authority  for  the  assertion. 

2  Hening's  Statutes,  cited  by  Neill. 


486  VIRGINIA   AND   MARYLAND.  [CHAP.  XVIII. 

royal  master,  he  probably  upheld  with  a  hearty  good  will  all  the 
measures  of  the  party  hostile  to  the  management  of  Southampton  and 
Sandys.  When  in  1624  the  charter  was  taken  away  from  the  Com 
pany,  Calvert  was  one  of  the  commissioners  appointed  to  take  charge 
of  the  affairs  of  the  colony.  It  is  not  improbable  that  these  facts 
were  remembered  against  him  when  he  appeared  in  Jamestown,  and 
Governor  Potts  tendered  to  him  and  his  companions  the  oath  of 
allegiance  and  supremacy.  A  man  who  had  been  the  principal  secre 
tary  of  state  to  James  for  the  last  five  or  six  years  of  his  life  ;  who 
had  done  all  he  could  to  further  the  most  despotic  acts  of  the  king  ; 
who  was  rightfully  supposed  to  have  been  active  in  the  efforts  to 
bring  about  the  marriage  of  Prince  Charles  with  the  Spanish  infanta  ; 
who  had  become  a  Catholic,  and  who  now  proposed  to  plant  a  Cath 
olic  colony  in  Virginia,  was  not  likely  to  be  popular  with  the  colo 
nists. 

His  interest  in  American  colonization,  however,  was  older  than  his 
conversion  to  the  religious  faith  to  which  he  was  now  attached.  That 
LordBaiti-  dated  from  the  first  settlement  of  Virginia.  Some  years 
on°vrein  N°ew-  before  the  death  of  James,  Calvert  had  obtained  a  grant  of 
foundiand.  ian(js  ni  the  southeastern  part  of  Newfoundland,  to  which 
he  gave  the  name  of  Avalon.  The  colony  he  there  established  and 
called  Ferryland,  Avas  about  twenty-five  miles  north  of  Cape  Race. 
It  was  a  Protestant  colony,  its  people  sent  out  by  Calvert,  till  he, 
in  1627,  as  the  Catholic  Lord  Baltimore,  whose  political  career  in 
England  was  ended,  conceived  the  idea  of  making  it  an  asylum 
for  himself  and  others  of  his  religious  faith.  He  visited  Ferryland 
that  and  the  following  year,  taking  with  him,  on  his  second  voyage, 
his  own  family  and  forty  other  papists.  The  country  did  not  answer 
his  expectations.  Discouraged,  in  a  few  months'  residence,  by  the 
severity  of  the  climate,  the  barrenness  of  the  soil,  and  the  sickness 
which  carried  off  about  one  fifth  of  his  company,  he  sailed  for  Vir 
ginia,  probably  in  the  spring  of  1629.1 

He  had  already  written  to  the  king  to  ask  for  a  grant  of  land  in 
that  region.  This  request  he  continued  to  urge  on  his  return-  to  Eng 
land,  only  with  a  more  definite  purpose.  His  visit  to  Chesapeake  Bay 
had  revealed  to  him  a  country  in  wonderful  and  charming  contrast 
with  the  bleak  shores  of  Avalon,  and  he  asked  of  the  king, — who 
was  undoubtedly  friendly  to  him,  although  he  discouraged  him  from 
engaging  in  enterprises  which  involved  a  necessity  of  much  labor  and 
an  exposure  to  hardship  which  the  condition  of  Lord  Baltimore's 
health  did  not  justify,  —  a  patent  which  should  include  all  that  region. 

1  Authorities  differ  on  this  point,  but  a  comparison  of  events  renders  it  most  probable 
that  the  spring  of  1629  was  the  time  when  Lord  Baltimore  first  visited  Virginia. 


1632.]  CHARTER   OF  MARYLAND.  487 

His  suit  was  successful,  though  he  did  not  live  to  take  advantage 
of  it. 

Lord  Baltimore  died  in  April,  1632,  but  so  far  matured  were  all 
his  plans,  that  the  patent  was  issued  in 
June  to  his  son  Cecilius.  The  father 
had,  indeed,  secured  a  grant  more  than 
a  year  before  of  lands  lying  south  of 
James  River,  but  the  opposition  to  this 
from  some  of  the  old  Virginians  was  so 
great  that  it  was  abandoned.1  He  then 
asked  that  the  country  northward  might 
be  given  him  ;  here,  he  thought,  he  and 
his  Catholic  brethren  might  plant  them 
selves  and  live  in  peace,  unmolested  by 

their  neighbors  on  the  James.     He  pro- 
Henrietta  Maria. 

posed  to  Charles  to  call  the  colony  Cres- 

centia,  assuring  the  king  that  he  should  have  been  glad  to  have  given 
his  name  to  it,  but  that  another  province  was  already  known  as  Caro- 
lana.  The  king  proposed  Mariana,'  in  honor  of  the  queen.  But  this 
was  objected  to  as  the  name  of  a  Spanish  historian.  Then,  said 
Charles,  let  it  be  Terra  Marice.  And  Maryland  —  the  Land  of  Mary 
—  it  was  henceforth  called.2 

The  Charter  of  Maryland  gave  to  Cecilius,  Baron  of  Baltimore,  his 
heirs  and  assigns,  as  its  "  true  and  absolute  lords  and  proprie- 

The  charter 

taries,"  all  the  country  lying  in  the  irregular  triangle  formed  of  Mary- 
by  the  fortieth  degree  of  latitude,  the  Potomac  River,  and 
Chesapeake  Bay  ;  as  well  as  "  all  that  part  of  the  peninsula  or  Cher 
sonese  lying  ....  between  the  ocean  on  the  east  and  the  bay  of 
Chesapeake  on  the  west,  divided  from  the  residue  thereof  by  a  right 
line  drawn  from  the  promontory  or  headland  called  Watkins's  Point." 
Briefly,  the  limits  of  the  Province  were  like  those  of  the  State  to-day, 
save  that  they  included  the  territory  afterward  set  apart  as  Dela 
ware,  and  extended  a  third  of  a  degree  farther  to  the  north  than  now. 
Thus  the  region  which  the  patent  conferred  was  taken  entirely  from 
what  was  then  known  as  Virginia  ;  but  the  conditions  and  privileges 
which  the  Maryland  grant  went  on  to  enumerate  differed  from  any 
that  had  been  given  in  the  case  of  any  previous  American  colony. 

1  The  Duke  of  Norfolk  had  proposed  a  settlement  on  the  south  banks  of  James  River  in 
1629, — possibly  the  very  lands  granted  to  Baltimore  two  years  later,  —  and  the  colonial 
assembly  decreed  that  a  county  should  be  named  for  him.    The  same  year  the  patent  to  Sir 
Robert  Heath,  which  included  the  whole  coast  from  Albemarle  Sound  to  St.  Augustine, 
was  granted  under  the  name  of  the  Province  of  Carolana,  in  honor  of  Charles.    Neill'a 
English  Colonization,  pp.  213,  214. 

2  Neill. 


488  VIRGINIA   AND   MARYLAND.  [CHAP.  XVIIL 

The  Lords  Baltimore  then  and  in  future  were  to  be  absolute  lords 
of  their  province,  in  as  full  a  sense  as  such  power  could  ever 
the  lorciVo-  be  conferred ;  that  is,  "  saving  always  the  faith  and  alle 
giance  and  sovereign  dominion  "  due  to  the  king.  They  held 
their  rights  by  fealty  only,  —  the  annual  payment  of  "two  Indian 
arrows  of  those  parts,"  and  the  requirement  that  they  should  deliver  a 
fifth  of  any  gold  or  silver  that  might  be  found,  being  prescribed  as 
formal  considerations  of  their  tenure.  No  article  of  the  grant  required 
them  to  render  account  of  their  administration  to  the  king  ;  none  pro 
vided  for  the  interference  of  the  crown  with  the  colonial  government, 
or  defined  occasions  for  it ;  none  even  prescribed  means  for  the  inves 
tigation  of  abuse  of  the  powers  conferred.  It  was  especially  stated 
that  the  new  province  should  not  thenceforth  be  a  part  of  the  land  of 
Virginia,  or  of  any  other  colony,  but  should  enjoy  entire  independence. 

But  the  charter  was  still  more  noteworthy  in  the  rights  which  it 
Political  secured  to  the  colonists  —  the  people.  It  provided  that  the 
fired  to" the  freemen  of  the  province  should  be  called  together  to  take 
colonists.  par£  jn  framing  the  laws  which  were  to  govern  them  ;  but  in 
cases  of  emergency,  when  it  should  not  be  convenient  to  call  together 
such  an  assembly  of  the  people,  the  legislative  power  was  given  to 
Lord  Baltimore  and  the  magistrates,  provided  that  such  laws  as  they 
might  enact  did  not  infringe  upon  the  rights  of  the  citizens,  "  in  mem 
ber,  life,  freehold,  goods  or  chattels."  Further,  the  liberties  thus 
strongly  secured  in  Maryland  were  open  to  all  subjects  of  the  English 
crown  ;  no  restrictions  were  placed  on  emigration  to  the  province  ; 
and  all  colonists  and  their  descendants  were  placed  on  the  footing  of 
native  Englishmen.  Last,  but  by  no  means  least  as  an  attraction  to 
free  settlers,  —  even  though  it  was  granted  rather  as  a  gift  to  the  pro 
prietaries  than  as  a  direct  privilege  to  the  people,  —  the  charter  added 
perpetual  exemption  from  all  taxation  by  the  crown.  The  proprie 
taries  and  the  provincial  assemblies  could  regulate  their  own  taxation, 
but  the  charter  left  this  to  them  alone. 

There  was  only  one  article  in  the  charter  even  distantly  relating  to 
clause  in  religious  matters  —  that  which  gave  to  the  proprietaries  the 
reiat^Tto*  patronages  and  advowsons  of  all  churches  which  should  be 
religion.  built  and  which  must  be  dedicated  and  consecrated  according 
to  the  ecclesiastical  laws  of  England.  There  was  no  discrimination  in 
favor  of  or  against  any  sect  within  the  limits  of  Christianity.  With 
out  trace  of  bigotry,  with  unprecedented  guaranties  of  liberty  to  the 
settler,  with  the  promise  of  freedom  from  financial  burdens,  the  charter 
of  Maryland  might  in  very  truth  be  said,  as  one  of  its  paragraphs 
affirmed,  to  "  eminently  distinguish "  the  new  province  "  above  all 
other  regions  of  that  territory,"  and  to  so  provide  that  the  new  colony 


1633.] 


CECIL    CAL VERT'S   COLONY. 


489 


might  "happily  increase  by  a  multitude  of  people  resorting  thither," 
and  that  English  subjects  might  undertake  the  emigration  to  it  "  with 
a  ready  and  a  cheerful  mind." 

Cecilius  Calvert,  now  Lord  Baltimore,  intended  to  go  himself  as 
leader  of  the  first  expedition,  but  being,  for  some  reason,  detained  in 
England,  he  delegated  the  com 
mand  to  his  younger  brother 
Leonard ;  Jerome  Hawley  and 
Thomas  Cornwallis,  "  two 
worthy  and  able  gentlemen," 
being  appointed  his  councillors 
.or  assistants. 

It  has  been  a  disputed  ques 
tion,  whether  the  majority  of 
those  taking  part  in  this  first 
voyage  to  Maryland  were  "  gen 
tlemen  "•  or  laborers,  but  the 
larger  portion  of  the  emigrants 
undoubtedly  belonged  to  the 
latter  class.  The  expedition, 
moreover,  was  in  every  sense 
under  Roman  Catholic  leader 
ship.  Maryland  was  to  be  an 
asylum  for  the  then  persecuted 

Romanists,  and  of  those  who  came  to  share  in  the  new  venture  the 
leading  men  were  some  twenty  gentlemen  "  of  very  good  fashion," 
men  of  influence  and  often  of  wealth,  who  hoped  to  find  a 

,  ,     .       Character  of 

quiet  resort  beyond  the  sea.    Among  these  adventurers,  their  the  colon- 
presence  and  leadership  lending  to  the  voyage  something  of 
the  aspect  and  fervor  of  a  religious  pilgrimage,  were  the  Jesuit  priests 
Father  Andrew  White  and  Father  John   Altham,  two  men  whose 
earnestness,   self-sacrifice,   and    simple   piety,  have  compelled  kindly 
recognition  from  historians  of  every  sect  and  opinion.     Father  White 
became  the  annalist  of  the  expedition,  and  from  his  quaint  and  pic 
turesque  "  Narrative,"  written  in  Latin  and  having  its  description  in 
terspersed  with  many  pious  reflections  and  devout  thanksgivings,  the 
most  vivid  idea  of  the  voyage  and  settlement  is  gained.1 

1  Relatio  Itineris  in  Marylandiam  (Narrative  of  a  Voyage  to  Maryland).  The  manu 
script  of  this  valuable  narrative  was  discovered  among  the  archives  of  the  "  Bonnes  pro- 
fessa"  of  the  Society  of  Jesus  in  Rome,  by  the  Rev.  William  McSherry,  of  that  order, 
about  1832.  Father  McSherry  at  once  copied  it  carefully,  and  deposited  the  copy  in  the 
library  of  the  Roman  Catholic  College  at  Georgetown,  whence  it  was  afterward  removed 
to  that  of  Loyola  College  at  Baltimore.  It  has  been  twice  translated,  —  first  in  1847  by 
Dr.  N.  C.  Brooks  (the  translation  which  appears  in  Force's  Hist.  Tracts,  vol.  iv.).  Our 


Cecil  Calvert. 


490 


VIRGINIA  AND   MARYLAND. 


[CHAP.  XVIII. 


The  whole  number  of  assembled  emigrants,  including  servants  and 
Departure  of  laborers,  was  nearly  or  quite  three  hundred.  On  Friday, 
iandMcoh>ny.  November  22,  1633,  they  sailed  from  Cowes,  in  the  Isle  of 
Wight,  in  a  ship,  The  Ark,  accompanied  by  a  pinnace, 
The  Dove,  and,  "  and  after  committing  the  principal  parts  of  the 
ship  to  the  protection  of  God  especially,  and  of  His  most  Holy 
Mother,  and  St.  Ignatius,  and  all  the  guardian  angels  of  Maryland, 
they  put  to  sea,  'i  with  a  gentle  east  wind  blowing." 


Cowes  in  the   Isle  of  Wight. 

The  voyage  was  long,  for  the  vessels  followed  the  circuitous  south 
ern  course  by  the  Azores  and  the  West  Indies  ;  and  at  St. 
Christopher's  and  Barbadoes  they  made  a  considerable  stay. 
The  first  part  of  the  passage  was  full  of  danger  ;  a  terrible  tempest  on 
the  25th  of  November,  separated  the  pinnace  from  the  ship,  nor  did 
the  smaller  vessel  reappear  till  six  weeks  later,  when  she  overtook  The 
Ark  far  on  in  her  course,  and  the  devout  emigrants  offered  up  a  hearty 
thanksgiving  for  their  reunion  with  the  friends  they  had  long  given 
up  for  lost.  Fears  of  pirates  haunted  them  throughout  the  voyage ; 
they  narrowly  escaped  falling  into  the  hands  of  a  Spanish  fleet  which 
lay  along  the  Cape  de  Verd  islands  ;  and  only  the  timely  discovery  of 
a  plot  among  the  slaves  at  Barbadoes,  prevented  their  finding  that 
island  given  up  to  anarchy  and  massacre,  amid  which  they  would  have 

quotations  are  made  from  the  later  and  more  accurate  translation,  edited  for  the  Maryland 
Historical  Society  in  1874,  by  the  Rev.  E.  A.  Dalrymple  of  Baltimore,  and  accompanied  by 
the  Latin  text. 


1634.]  CECIL   CAL VERT'S   COLONY.  491 

run  some  risk  of  being  murdered  for  the  sake  of  their  ship  and  cargo. 
Storms  were  frequent,  nor  were  they  always  saved  from  danger  by 
monitory  "  sun-fish  swimming  with  great  efforts  against  the  course  of 
the  sun,"  which  Father  White  believed  to  be  "  a  very  sure  sign  of  a 
terrible  storm,"  and  which  once,  at  least,  led  them  to  take  prompt  pre 
cautions.  Beset  with  perils  as  they  were,  the  emigrants  nevertheless 
made  their  voyage  in  safety,  and  at  last,  on  February  24,  1634,  they 
sighted  Point  Comfort,  in  Virginia. 

Glad  as  they  were  to  be  so  near  the  end  of  their  tedious  voyage,  the 
new-comers  had  some  cause  to  fear  for  their  reception  among  Their  recep. 
the  colonists  along  the  James,  where  the  hostility  excited  v?rginfanhe 
by  the  granting  of  Lord  Baltimore's  patent  was  now  at  its  s°vernor- 
height.  But  Governor  Harvey,  anxious  to  gain  favor  with  the  king, 
and  personally  friendly  to  Baltimore's  purposes,  was  able  to  prevent 
any  disagreeable  manifestation  of  the  popular  feeling.  He  met  the 
settlers,  fortified  as  they  were  with  royal  letters  to  him,  most  hospit 
ably,  and  treated  them  kindly  during  their  stay  of  more  than  a  week. 
On  the  third  of  March  they  again  set  sail,  and  were  soon  within  those 
boundaries,  on  the  shore  of  the  beautiful  bay,  which  were  to  mark 
their  future  home.  Right  gladly  did  they  see  the  pleasant  region  that 
awaited  them,  for  few  emigrants  to  North  America  had  been  greeted 
by  a  more  genial  climate  or  more  beautiful  lands  than  these ;  and  in 
the  pride  of  possession  they  "  began  to  give  names  to  places," 1  calling 
the  southern  point  at  the  Potomac's  mouth,  now  Smith  Point,  by 
the  name  of  St.  Gregory,  and  the  northern  one  St.  Michael's,  now 
Point  Lookout. 

The  entrance  to  the  great  river,  as  Father  White  described  it 
with  enthusiastic  admiration,  presented  nearly  the  same  appearance 
as  in  our  own  day.  "It  is  not,"  he  remarked,  "  disfigured  with  any 
swamps,  but  has  firm  land  on  each  side.  Fine  groves  of  trees  appear, 
not  choked  with  briers  or  bushes  and  undergrowth,  but  growing  at 
intervals  as  if  planted  by  the  hand  of  man,  so  that  you  can  drive  a 
four-horse  carriage  wherever  you  chose  among  the  trees."  To  the 
right  and  left  opened  the  mouths  of  broad  estuaries,  —  tributary 
streams  with  low  shores,  behind  which  rose  gentle  hills,  covered  with 
plentiful,  yet  not  dense  forests.  "  Never  have  I  beheld  a  larger  or 
more  beautiful  river,"  wrote  the  priest ;  "  the  Thames  seems  a  mere 
rivulet  in  comparison  with  it."  The  Ark  and  the  Dove  sailed  up  the 
broad  stream,  while  the  shores  at  night  blazed  with  the  camp-fires  of 
the  Indians  ;  and  the  daylight  revealed  to  the  emigrants  armed  bands 

i  A  Relation  of  Maryland,  together  with  a  Map  of  the  Country,  etc.,  London,  1635.  Sabin's 
reprint,  edited  by  Hawks,  New  York,  1865.  This  contemporary  record  is  second  to  Father 
White's  in  value  as  regards  details.  Its  author  is  unknown. 


492 


VIRGINIA   AND   MARYLAND. 


[CHAP.  XVIII. 


hurrying  to  and  fro,  the  tribes  they  believed  mustering  to  resist  their 
landing. 

Somewhat  more  than  thirty  miles  from  the  river's  mouth  lay  a 
group  of  islands,  called  the  Herons'  Islands,  from  the  great  number 
of  those  birds  that  flocked  about  them.  They  are  known  now  as  the 
Blackstone  Islands,  and  in  the  two  centuries  that  have  elapsed,  almost 
all  of  them  have  been  washed  away,  a  few  only  rising  above  the  level 


of  flood  tide.  The  first  of  these, 
long  since  reduced  to  a  long,  low 
sandspit,  hardly  discernible  above  the 
water,  the  voyagers  named  St.  Clements, 
and  chose  as  their  first  landing-place  on 
Maryland  soil.  It  had  then  a  sloping 
shore,  and  cedars,  nut-trees,  sassafras,  with 
flowers  and  herbs,  covered  the  four  hundred  acres  of  dry  land  which 
have  now  so  nearly  disappeared.  On  March  25,  the  "  day  of  the  An 
nunciation  of  the  Most  Holy  Virgin  Mary,"  —  an  omen  which  the 
ceremonies  pious  emigrants  did  not  fail  to  note,  —  they  took  possession  of 
on  landing.  faQ  country  with  solemn  ceremonies.  After  celebrating  mass 
upon  the  beach,1  they  followed  their  governor  in  reverent  procession 
to  the  highest  part  of  the  island,  where  they  planted  a  great  cross  of 

i  After  speaking  of  the  celebration  of  mass,  Father  White  adds,  "  this  had  never  been 
done  before  in  this  part  of  the  world."  He  was  not  aware  of  the  Jesuit  mission  on  the  banks 
of  the  Rappahanock,  sixty  years  earlier.  See  p.  221  of  this  volume. 


1634.] 


CECIL    CALVERT'S   COLONY. 


493 


wood  and  knelt  around  it,  while  the  litany  was  read.  Then  Leonard 
Calvert  solemnly  proclaimed  their  right  to  the  beautiful  region  about 
them,  and  took  possession  of  it  "  for  our  Saviour  and  for  our  Sover- 
aigne  Lord  the  King  of  England." 

Two  days  were  spent  in  explorations  by  the  governor,  who  went  up 
the  river  in  the  Dove,  taking  with  him  another  pinnace  brought  from 
Virginia  ;  the  greater  part  of  the  colonists  remaining  on  board  the 
Ark  meanwhile,  as  she  lay  at  anchor  in  the  river  at  St.  Clement's, 
watched  by  a  crowd  of  curious  Indians  upon  the  shore.  The 

C&l  vert's 

chief  object  of  Calvert's  excursions  was  to  treat  with  the  journey  up 

i-t  -i  -11  n  •  i  the  Potomac. 

leaders  ot  the  tribes,  and  seek  to  do  away  with  any  hostility 
with  which  they  might  look  upon  the  new  settlement.    The  people  left 

behind  in  the  Ark,  by  signs  of  friend- 
ship  to  the  savages  about  them,  grad- 
uaUy  made  acquaintance  with  them 
as  they  ventured  out  to  the  island 
an(*  watcned  *"e  English  putting  to 


Governor  Calvert  and  the  Indian  Chief. 


gether  a  little  vessel,  the  parts  of  which  they  had  brought  with  them. 
They  wondered  where  a  tree  could  have  grown  large  enough  to  be  hol 
lowed  for  the  hull  of  the  Ark;  and  were  amazed  at  all  the  tools  and 
arms  of  the  English.  Little  by  little  they  became  convinced  of  the 
perfect  friendliness  of  the  strangers  ;  nor  was  Calvert  less  successful  in 
establishing  good  relations  with  the  chiefs.  At  an  Indian  town  near 
the  mouth  of  Acquia  Creek,  where  the  werowance,  or  chief,  was  a 


494  VIRGINIA   AND   MARYLAND.  [CHAP.  XVIII. 

child,  and  his  uncle  Archihau  held  the  regency,  the  English  were 
gladly  welcomed,  and  established  a  lasting  friendship  ;  and  still  fur 
ther  up  the  Potomac,  at  Piscataway,  they  had  a  somewhat  similar, 
though  more  cautious  reception.  Here  they  found  a  Captain  Henry 
Fleet,  who  had  traded  for  some  time  among  these  Indians  for  furs, 
and  used  his  influence  over  the  chief  to  induce  him  to  go  on  board  the 
pinnace  for  an  interview  with  Calvert.  The  friendliness  of  his  bear 
ing  soon  banished  the  suspicions  of  the  chief  and  his  followers,  who 
had  gathered  on  the  shore  fearing  treachery  ;  and  the  parley  was 
highly  successful.  The  definite  question  was  put  by  the  Governor, 
whether  the  chief  "  would  be  content  that  he  and  his  people  should 
set  down  in  his  country,  in  case  he  should  find  a  place  convenient  for 
him  ;  "  the  werowance  gave  the  cautious  but  friendly  answer  that  he 
"  would  not  bid  him  go,  neither  would  he  bid  him  stay,  but  that  he 
might  use  his  own  discretion." 

This  Captain  Fleet  was  familiar  with  the  Potomac  and  the  neighbor 
ing  country,  where  he  had  long  carried  on  a  profitable  trade  in  peltries. 
He  had,  at  one  time,  been  held  as  a  prisoner  for  several  years  among 
The  Anacos-  the  Nacostines  or  Anacostans,  a  tribe  whose  principal  vil- 
tan  Indians.  \.dge  was  on  ^]ie  gj^g  of  {}ie  present  city  of  Washington,  where 
their  name  is  still  preserved  in  a  corrupted  form  in  the  island  Analos- 
tan  in  the  Potomac,  and  in  a  little  post-office  station,  Anacostia,  near 
the  city  limits.  His  relations  with  the  neighboring  Indians  at  the  time 
of  Calvert's  arrival  were  friendly,  and  he  was,  at  least,  in  no  fear  from 
his  old  enemies.  He  was  a  roving  adventurer,  sailing  to  New  England, 
or  to  Jamestown,  or  returning  to  England,  wherever  a  trade  in  corn 
or  beaver  offered  the  most  inducement ;  but  his  long  imprisonment 
among  the  Anacostans  had  made  him  most  familiar  with  the  resources 
along  almost  the  whole  course  of  the  Potomac.  He  was  not  permitted, 
however,  to  enjoy  the  advantages  of  this  trade  undisputed.  To  con 
ceal  its  source  was  impossible ;  others  followed  him  from  Jamestown, 
and  he  was  at  length  arrested  by  order  of  the  authorities  there  for 
trading  without  a  license.  Two  years  before  he  had  been  taken  to 
Jamestown  and  put  upon  trial,  but  the  difficulty  seems  to  have  been 
compounded  by  his  admitting  others  to  a  share  in  his  ventures,  the 
profits  probably  being  increased  by  the  employment  of  larger  cap 
ital. 

Fleet  was  no  doubt  aware  that  a  charter  had  been  granted  to  Lord 
Baltimore,  and  may  have  seen  something  of  the  excitement  caused  at 
Jamestown  when  the  news  was  received  that  a  Catholic  colony  would 
soon  be  planted  in  such  disagreeable  proximity,  and  in  a  country 
which  the  Virginians  believed  was  rightfully  theirs.  He  either  did 
not  share  the  religious  prejudices  of  the  colonists,  or  was  ready  for 


1634.J  CECIL   CALVERT'S  COLONY.  495 

other  reasons  to  welcome  the  new-comers.  Welcome  them,  at  any 
rate,  he  did  ;  became  afterward  one  of  their  number  as  a  man  of  some 
mark  and  influence,  and  when  finally  the  colony  was  established,  was 
a  member  of  its  General  Assembly.1 

Under  the  guidance  of  the  man  thus  fortunately  met  with,  the  Ark 
and  the  pinnace  now  dropped  down  the  river  to  the  mouth  of  a  stream 


St.   George's    Island. 

flowing  into  the  Potomac,  Calvert  deciding  not  to  make  his  first  settle 
ment  so  far  from  the  sea.  This  stream  they  named  the  St.  George ; 
one  of  the  "  two  harbors  "  formed  at  its  mouth  2  received  the  name 
St.  Mary's,  which  has  become  the  modern  name  of  the  whole  river, 
though  a  wooded  island  near  at  hand  still  preserves  the  older  title. 
Sandy  points,  doubtless  higher  then  than  now,  and  different  in  form  from 
those  left  by  the  wearing  tides  of  two  centuries,  marked  the  entrance 
through  which  Fleet  guided  them  toward  his  favorite  village  of  Yao- 
comico  ; 3  but  a  little  way  back  from  the  banks,  the  land  rose  in 
gentle  undulations,  and  in  the  further  distance  into  hills  of  moderate 
height. 

The  river  itself  was  rather  a  series  of  broad  bays  or  lakes  than  a 
stream  of  regular  width  and  rapid  current.  Passing  up  through 
several  of  these,  to  one  which  they  named  "  the  bay  of  St.  Ignatius," 
the  settlers  anchored  and  prepared  to  land.  At  the  end  of  the  broad 
harbor  a  low  promontory  extended  from  the  eastern  shore,  ending 
in  a  sandy  beach,  the  present  Chancellor's  Point ;  and  on  this,  as 
we  understand  Father  White's  description,  the  Maryland  colonists 

1  A  narrative  of  Fleet's  voyages  to  the  Potomac  was  first  published  in  Neill's  English 
Colonization. 

2  Concerning  the  probable  condition  of  these  bays  and  their  shores,  and  their  difference 
from  their  present  form,  see  the  elaborate  note  K  to  White's  Narrative,  p.  107  of  Dr.  Dai 
ry  mple's  edition. 

3  The  name  Yaocomico  is  now  given  to  a  village  on  the  Virginia  side  of  the  Potomac, 
nearly  opposite  St.  Mary's  River  ;  but  this  is  an  entirely  modern  transfer  of  the  title  from 
the  site  to  which  it  properly  belonged,  —  the  territory  of  King  Yaocomico,  on  the  St. 
Mary's. 


496 


VIRGINIA   AND  MARYLAND. 


[CHAP.  XVIII. 


first  set  foot.  Walking  on  through  the  woods  and  along  the  bank 
for  a  mile  or  more,  they  came  upon  a  region  whose  beauty  and  fitness 
satisfied  them  that  here  was  a  proper  site  for  their  future  town.  The 
river-bank  was  higher  here  than  it  was  farther  down  the  stream,  while 

behind  it,  at  a  distance  of  about  a  half  mile  from  the  water- 
tor  their  side,  lay  a  gently  sloping  valley,  on  the  further  side  of  which, 

again,  was  higher  land  gradually  rising  to  the  inland  hills. 
In  this  valley  springs  were  then  as  now  abundant ;  and  scattered 
through  it  were  groves  of  nut  trees  and  oaks.  Here  the  Indians  had 


The   Bluff  at   St.   Mary's. 

their  village;  and  where  it  approached  the  water's  edge  the  bank  rose 
into  a  bold  bluff  between  two  broad  expanses  of  the  river,  similar  to 
those  below.  The  soil  was  fertile ;  the  neighboring  woods,  Father 
White  declares,  were  free  from  dangerous  animals ;  the  place  seemed 
well-nigh  perfect  for  their  purpose. 

On  the  highest  part  of  the  bluff  stood  a  mulberry  tree,  large  enough 
even  then  to  throw  a  broad  shade  about  it,  and  to  be  visible  for  a  long 
distance  up  and  down  the  river.  For  more  than  two  hundred  years 
afterward  its  mass  of  foliage  still  crowned  the  promontory ;  and  its 
decayed  and  blackened  trunk,  lying  where  it  fell  but  a  few  years  ago, 
yet  marks  the  place  of  its  growth,  but  nearer  to  the  edge  of  the  bank 
than  it  was  when  the  settlers  first  stood  around  it,  for  the  river  has 
changed  and  reduced  the  sandy  cape.  Under  this  tree,  according  to 
well-authenticated  tradition,  Leonard  Calvert  made  a  treaty  with  the 
Indians  of  the  village.  For  a  certain  payment  in  cloth,  tools, 
chase  of  the  and  trinkets  the  tribe  of  Yaocomico  consented  that  the 

Indian  vil-  -i         -i  -i       t  i      •  -11 

lageand        strangers  should  share  their  town  with  them  through  the 

lands.  .  .  . 

harvest,   and  then  should  purchase  all  the   site,  while  the 
easily-contented  savages  removed  their  dwelling  elsewhere.     The  fre- 


1634.] 


THE   FIRST   TOWN. 


497 


quent  raids  of  the  Susquehannahs  from  the  north  had  already  inclined 
them  to  this  step ;  and  they  were  the  more  glad  if  by  so  doing  they 
could  win  the  powerful  alliance  of  the  Englishmen.  They  "  made  mu 
tual  promises  to  each 
other,  to  live  friend 
ly  and  peaceably  to 
gether,  and  if  any  in 
jury  should  happen 
to  be  done  on  either 
part,  that  satisfac 
tion  should  be  made 
for  the  same."  On 
the  27th  of  March  the 
governor  took  posses 
sion,  and  named  the 
first  village  of  Mary 
land  Saint  Mary's. 
The  colonists  set 
about  their  build 
ing  and  planting  at 
once ;  and  the  com 
pact  with  the  In 
dians  was  kept  with 
scrupulous  fidelity. 
Through  the  spring 
and  early  summer  the 
whites  and  savages 
worked  side  by  side, 
the  Indians  teaching 
the  English  to  make 
bread  and  "pone"  of  Indian  corn,  or  helping  them  in  the  hunt; 
the  settlers  giving  them  of  their  trinkets  and  tools  in  return. 

Naturally,  Father  White  and  his  fellow-priests  made  haste  to  fit  up 
a  temporary  chapel  in  the  Indian  cabin  falling  to  their  share ;  but 
it  was  not  long  before  they  established  themselves  in  a 
more  fitting  place  for  worship.  Even  before  the  Indians  had 
retired,  according  to  the  terms  of  their  agreement,  the  new 
houses  which  the  colonists  were  building  on  every  hand  were  ready 
for  occupation.  A  little  town  of  comparatively  comfortable  dwellings 
clustered  in  the  valley,  while  nearer  the  river  bank,  and  especially  on 
the  bluff,  preparations  were  made  for  what  were  to  be  the  public  build 
ings  of  the  colony.  On  the  gradual  slope  from  the  inland  hills  toward 
the  valley,  and  less  than  half  a  mile  to  the  eastward  of  the  promon- 


Return  from   a   Hunt. 


Building  of 
the  Catholic 
Chapel. 


498  VIRGINIA   AND   MARYLAND.  [CHAP.  XVIII. 

tory,  the  first  church  was  built  —  a  small  building,  as  is  shown  by  the 
still  visible  hollow  in  which  its  foundations  rested,  but  decorated  with 
all  the  skill  that  the  rough  tools  of  the  colonists  permitted.  Over  the 
altar  was  a  rudely-carved  representation  of  a  mass  of  clouds,  from 
which  rough  wooden  points  descending  represented  the  tongues  of 
flame  at  Pentecost.  In  the  Roman  Catholic  College  at  Georgetown 
two  fragments  of  this  rude  altar-piece  still  remain,  plainly  showing 
the  simplicity  and  roughness  of  the  whole. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

MARYLAND  UNDER  LEONARD  CALVERT. 

THE  COLONY  FIRMLY  PLANTED.  —  HOSTILITY  OF  THE  VIRGINIANS. — DISPUTE  WITH 
CLAYBORNE.  —  ENGAGEMENT  BETWEEN  CLAYBORNE  AND  CORNWALLIS.  —  GOVERNOR 
HARVEY  DEPOSED  AND  SENT  TO  ENGLAND.  —  MEETINGS  OF  THE  MARYLAND  ASSEM 
BLY. —  TROUBLE  WITH  THE  INDIANS.  —  DISSENSIONS  BETWEEN  PAPISTS  AND  PURI 
TANS. —  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLAND.  —  A  PARLIAMENTARY  SHIP  SEIZED  IN  MARYLAND. 
—  CLAYBORNE'S  RECOVERY  OF  KENT  ISLAND. — His  RULE  IN  MARYLAND.  —  RESTO 
RATION  OF  BALTIMORE.  —  DEATH  OF  GOVERNOR  CALVERT.  —  MISTRESS  MARGARET 
BRENT. 

BEFORE  the  winter  set  in  the  Maryland  colonists  were  all  comfort 
ably  sheltered  in  houses  gathered  close  about  the  chapel.     In  that  soft 
and  genial  climate  there  was  no 
hardship  in   living  out  of  doors 
during   the    summer,   and  their 
wise  treatment   of    the   natives 
had  given  them  entire  freedom 
from  fear  of  the  hostilities  which 
they  had  most  dreaded.     Their 
first  trouble  came  from  their  own 

Maryland   Shilling. 

countrymen.      The    indignation 

with  which  the  Virginians  heard  of  the  new  colony  was  natural  enough, 
however  unreasonable.  It  was  not  a  question  of  room,  for  that  the 
country  was  large  enough  no  one  could  dispute  ;  but  how  many  it 
could  support  was  a  serious  consideration.  The  Virginians  were 
jealous  of  even  a  single  man  who  should  encroach  upon  the  trade  in 
peltries  ;  that  jealousy  grew  to  open  enmity  when  the  intruders  were 
numerous  enough  to  absorb  completely  all  the  trade  with  Indians  in 
the  country  about  them.  The  advantages  that  must  follow  from  an 
increase  in  the  population  of  civilized  people,  the  cultivation  of  the 
soil,  the  growth  of  commerce,  were  less  immediate  and  obvious  than 
the  disadvantages  so  plainly  seen  and  felt  at  once  as  a  scarcity  of 
beaver  skins  and  corn,  and  higher  prices  for  these  Indian  staples. 
These  intruders  on  the  Potomac,  moreover,  though  coming  under  a 
royal  charter,  were  settling  within  the  domain  which  the  Virginians 
had  long  been  accustomed  to  consider  their  own,  and  to  the  loss  of 


500  MARYLAND   UNDER   LEONARD   CALVERT.         [CHAP.  XIX. 

which,  by  the  abrogation  of  their  charter,  they  were  by  no  means 
reconciled. 

On  the  other  hand  the  Marylanders  were  quite  secure  in  their  rights 
under  the  patent  from  the  king,  and  resented,  no  doubt,  with  some 
bitterness,  the  feeling  they  knew  to  exist  against  them  in  Jamestown 
because  of  their  religion.  In  such  a  state  of  feeling,  any  encounter 
between  the  colonists  would  be  likely  to  lead  to  trouble. 

Among  others  who  had  traded  within  the  limits  of  Baltimore's 
patent  for  some  years  past  was  William  Clayborne,  the  secretary  of 
Virginia  under  Governor  Harvey,  and  a  member  of  the  Virginia 
Council.  He  had  done  more  than  trade,  —  which  he  did  under  royal 
licenses  of  different  dates  authorizing  him  to  explore  from  the  thirty- 
fourth  to  the  forty-first 
degree  of  latitude,  —  he 
had  established  on  Kent 
Island,  in  Chesapeake 
Bay,  and  within  the  limits 
of  the  Maryland  grant,  a 
small  trading  post,  with  a 
storehouse  and  a  few  per 
manent  settlers  whom  he 
employed  in  the  traffic 
with  the  Indians  of  that 
vicinity.  His  trade-per 
mits  were  not  indeed 
grants  of  territory,  but  it 

Clayborne's  Trading-post  on  Kent  Island.  . 

may  fairly  be  questioned 

whether  actual  settlement  in  the  wilderness  of  America  was  not  as 
good  title  as  a  royal  patent.  At  any  rate,  Clayborne  put  forward  a 
claim  to  proprietorship,  refused  to  acknowledge  the  government  of  the 
Maryland  proprietary,  and  used  his  influence  so  vigorously  in  urging 
this  view  upon  the  Virginian  authorities  that  he  succeeded  in  gaining 
a  majority  of  the  council  to  the  support  of  his  pretensions. 

Just  before  the  setting  out  of  the  colonists  from  England,  in  1633, 
the  planters  of  Virginia  had  presented  a  remonstrance  to  the  king 
against  the  Maryland  patent ;  but  the  Privy  Council  had  only  advised 
an  amicable  settlement,  and  had  finally  decided  "  that  the  Lord  Balti 
more  should  be  left  to  his  patent,  and  the  other  parties  to  the  course 
of  law ;  "  while  both  colonies  were  ordered  to  permit  entire  freedom 
of  trade  between  them,  to  harbor  no  fugitives  one  from  the  other,  and 
to  preserve  a  fitting  general  amity  in  all  their  relations.  This  reas 
serted  conclusively  the  rights  of  Maryland  ;  yet  so  far  from  ending 
the  pretensions  of  the  Virginian  trader,  it  was  followed  by  a  long 
course  of  resistance  to  the  new  jurisdiction. 


1635.]  DISPUTE  WITH   CLAYBORNE.  501 

His  bitter  hostility  to  the  new  colonists  had  shown  itself  from  the 
very  moment  of  their  landing  in  America.  He  had  met  Leonard  Cal- 
vert  and  his  emigrants  at  Jamestown,  seeking  to  discourage  them  at 
the  outset  by  stories  that  the  Indians  along  the  Potomac  were  arming 
to  resist  their  coming.  Their  actual  landing  and  settlement  excited 
him  to  measures  for  which  there  is  not  a  word  of  defence  in  any  view 
of  the  case.  He  attempted  to  turn  against  the  new-comers  the  friendly 
tribes  with  whom,  on  a  visit  soon  after  their  arrival,  Harvey  found 
them  peacefully  associated.  He  seems  to  have  had  influence  enough 
over  Fleet  at  one  time  to  induce  him  to  persuade  the  Indians  that  the 
Maryland  colonists  were  Spaniards,  enemies  of  the  Virginians,  who 
meant  to  drive  out  the  tribes  about  them  as  soon  as  they  should  be 
strong  enough  to  spoil  their  villages  and  take  their  lands.  So  well 
did  he  succeed,  that  even  in  the  tribe  with  whom  they  had  lived  at 
St.  Mary's,  jealousies  and  suspicious  conduct  had  begun  to  alarm  the 
colonists,  who  hastened  to  build  a  block  house  for  a  refuge  in  emer 
gency.  Yet  constant  and  unbroken  kindness  proved  stronger  than 
Clayborne's  efforts ;  gradually,  the  savages  became  convinced  of  the 
sincerity  of  the  peaceful  settlers ;  harmony  was  restored,  and  when 
the  Indians  withdrew  from  the  village  according  to  their  promise,  they 
did  so  with  assurances  of  continued  friendship. 

But  Clayborne's  energy  and  persistency  in  behalf  of  his  claims 
made  him  a  truly  formidable  opponent.  Easily  evading  capture  by 
the  Marylanders,  whom  Lord  Baltimore  had  ordered  to  seize  him  if 
they  could,  he  spent  the  last  months  of  the  year  in  restlessly  urging 
his  plans  upon  the  influential  men  of  Virginia,  and  in  preparing  to 
carry  out  the  intention  which  he  had  announced,  of  maintaining  his 
alleged  rights  even  by  the  use  of  force.  The  majority  of  the  Virgin 
ians  sustained  him  ;  the  assembly  advised  Clayborne  that  they  knew 
no  reason  why  he  or  they  should  surrender  the  Isle  of  Kent  to  the 
new  province.  Governor  Harvey  alone  was  on  the  side  of  the  Mary 
land  people,  and  for  his  good  offices  Lord  Baltimore  subsequently  pro 
cured  him  a  letter  of  thanks  from  the  king.1 

In  the  early  spring  of  1635,  when  Clayborne  despatched  a  small 
vessel,  the  Long  Tail,  determined  to  carry  out  his  usual  trad- 

•  /»  i  t*  •       TT«       •     •        Fignt  be~ 

ing  voyage  in  spite  of  resistance,  there  were  few  in  Virginia   tween  armed 
disposed  to  hinder  him.     But   the    Marylanders  were   pre-  ciaybome 
pared,  having  sent  out  two  armed  pinnaces  under  their  com-  Maryland 
missioner  or  councillor,  Cornwallis,  to  watch  for  any  illegal 
traders  within  the  charter  boundaries.     They  seized   the  Long  Tail 
on  the  23d  of  April ;  and  when  Clayborne  sent  an  armed  boat  under 
the  command  of   one  Ratcliff  Warren  to  recapture  her  or  seize  any 
1  Letter  to  Windebank,  quoted  in  Neill's  English  Colonization  of  America,  p.  242. 


502 


MARYLAND    UNDER  LEONARD   CALVERT.        [CHAP.  XIX. 


Maryland  vessels  he  might  encounter,  Cornwallis  met  her  with  one  of 
his  pinnaces  in  the  harbor  of  Wighcomoco  on  May  10th,  and  took  her 
after  a  fight  in  which  Warren  and  two  men  of  the  Virginians  were 
killed,  with  one  of  Cornwallis's  own  crew.  The  chief  of  the  surviving 
Virginians  seem  to  have  been  held  by  the  Maryland  officers  for  trial ; 
the  captured  boat  to  have  been  carried  to  St.  Mary's. 

This  open  conflict  between  the  two  colonies  (for  Clayborne  was  so 
generally  sustained  as  to  give  it  virtually  that  importance),  caused  the 
most  intense  excitement,  especially  when  it  was  followed  by  a  demand 
on  the  part  of  Maryland.  The  first  Assembly  of  that  province  had 
been  convened  just  before  the  attack  upon  Clayborne,  and  though 
nearly  all  the  records  of  its 
proceedings  are  lost,  leaving 
us  in  almost  complete  igno 
rance  of  its  acts,  yet  we  know 
from  subsequent  references,1 


Fight  between    Clayborne  and   Corn 


that  it  decreed  "  that  offenders,  in  all  murders  and  felonies,  shall 
suffer  the  same  pains  and  forfeitures  as  for  the  same  crimes  in  Eng- 

A  O 

land."  In  the  eyes  of  the  Maryland  authorities  Clayborne's  act  was 
a  felony  ;  and  they  sent  messengers  to  Governor  Harvey,  requiring 
that  he  should  deliver  up  to  them  the  man  who  according  to  their 
understanding  of  the  matter,  had  rebelled  against  the  terms  of  the 
king's  charter,  and  had  used  force  against  their  government.  Harvey, 
it  is  true,  did  not  venture  to  comply  with  this  demand,  but  he  in 
sisted  that  Clayborne  should  go  to  England  to  justify  himself  before 
the  home  government. 

The  Virginia  governor  had  from  various  causes  become  exceedingly 
1  Chalmers  Annals.     See  Bozman,  vol.  ii.,  p.  34,  and  note. 


1635.] 


INTENSE   FEELING  IN   VIRGINIA. 


503 


unpopular,  and  this  support  on  his  part  of  the  Marylanders  led  to  ab 
solute  revolution.     The  news  of  the  seizure  of  Clayborne's 
vessel  and  the  killing  of  his  men  was  received  at  Jamestown  at  Jamese-n 
with  the  utmost  indignation.     The  people  insisted  that  Har 
vey  should  at  once  demand  the  surrender  of  the  captured  pinnace,  the 
recognition  of  Clayborne's  claim  to  Kent's  Island,  and  that  he  should 
add  his  protest  to  that  of  the  colonists  generally  against  the  patent  of 
Baltimore  and  the  conduct  of  his  people.    Harvey  refused  with  a  firm 
ness  creditable  to  his  courage  if  not  to  his  judgment.     Affairs  came  at 
once  to  a  crisis  ;  a  public  meeting  was  called  to  meet  at  the  house  of 
William  Barrene,  the  speaker  of  the  Assembly.    There  was  Gov  JSa.rrey 
the  utmost  excitement,  but  the  utmost  unanimity.     Some  deP°sed- 
months  before,  Harvey  had  written  to  England  that  the  feeling  against 


Excitement  at  Jamestown. 

Maryland  was  so  intense 
in  Virginia  that  the  people  openly 
declared  they  would  rather  knock 
their  cattle  on  the  head  than  sell 
them  to  that  colony ;  and  that 

among  the  malcontents  none  were  so  violent  as  Cap 
tain  Sam.  Mathews,  "who  scratching  his  head  and  in 
a  fury  stamping  cried  out,  'A  pox  upon  Maryland!" 
To  this  man  was  intrusted  the  delicate  business  of 
dealing  with  Harvey  in  this  emergency.  The  next 
day,  taking  forty  men  with  him,  he  marched  to  the 
governor's  house.  This  being  surrounded,  to  prevent  escape,  a  mem 
ber  of  the  council,  John  Uty,  entered  and  arrested  Harvey  on  a  charge 


504  MARYLAND   UNDER  LEONARD   CALVERT.       [CHAP.  XIX. 

of  treason.  A  few  days  later  the  General  Assembly  met  and  elected 
John  West  as  governor  and  sent  Harvey  to  England  for  trial.  Clay- 
borne  went  also  to  England  to  get  the  redress  which  Virginia,  however 
good  her  will  was,  was  powerless  to  give  him,  but  was  discouraged  by 
Charles  declaring  that  the  act  of  the  Virginians,  in  arresting  and  send 
ing  home  a  governor,  was  an  intolerable  assumption  of  sovereignty ; 
that  Harvey  should  go  back  though  it  were  only  for  a  day.1 

Some  years  of  peace  and  prosperity  followed  in  Maryland.  From 
time  to  time  the  colony  was  reinforced  by  the  accession  of  new  emi- 
igrants.  So  large  had  been  the  yield  from  their  corn,  even  during  the 
first  season's  planting,  that  they  had  sent  a  thousand  bushels  to  New 
England  "  to  provide  them  some  salt-fish,  and  other  commodities 
which  they  wanted  ;  "  their  cattle  and  poultry,  brought  from  Virginia, 
had  increased  "  to  a  great  stock,  sufficient  to  serve  the  colonie  very 
plentifully." 

The  settlement  had  assumed  much  more  of  the  aspect  of  a  town 
than  any  other  English  colony  had  gained  in  so  short  a  time  after  its 
foundation.  It  had  been  built  from  the  beginning  with  no  war  or 
disturbance  to  interrupt  its  progress,  or  to  make  its  people  fear  for  its 
permanence.  Bricks  and  other  materials  had  been  brought  from 
England  in  large  quantities,  and  substantial  dwellings  had  almost 
immediately  succeeded  to  the  Indian  cabins.  Private  buildings  of 
course  came  first ;  and  the  earlier  assemblies  of  the  province  seem  to 
st.  John's  have  met  at  a  manor  belonging  to  Governor  Calvert,  called 
St.  John's,  and  situated  farther  inland.  But  the  command 
ing  bluff,  overlooking  all  the  neighborhood,  was  sure,  sooner  or  later, 
to  become  the  site  of  the  capitol  of  the  colony  ;  and  after  the  lapse 
of  several  years  a  government  building  or  state-house  was  erected 
there,  in  the  form  of  an  irregular  cross,  some  fifty  feet  in  length 
and  more  than  thirty  across  the  shorter  arms.2  It  stood  but  a  short 
distance  —  a  little  more  than  thirty  yards  —  in  the  rear  of  the  mul 
berry  tree,  and  the  rough  cruciform  hollow  where  its  foundations 
were  laid  may  still  be  seen,  filled  with  a  dense  undergrowth  of  weeds 
and  bushes,  that  spring  here  and  there  from  the  fragments  of  broken 
masonry.  On  the  mulberry  tree  before  it,  probably  then  the  only 
large  tree  upon  the  bluff,  were  nailed  the  proclamations  of  Calvert  and 
his  successors,  the  notices  of  punishments  and  fines,  the  inventories  of 

1  Neill. 

2  It  is  impossible  to  fix  with  certainty  the  exact  date  of  the  building  of  the  state-house, 
or  of  any  of  the  other  principal  buildings  ;  but  they  belonged,  at  all  events,  to  the  earliest 
part  of  the  history  of  the  settlement.     To  Dr.  Brome,  the  present  owner  of  St.  Mary's 
Manor,  a  large  estate  covering  the  site  and  whole  neighborhood  of  old  St.  Mary's,  who  has 
carefully  preserved  many  local  traditions,  we  are  indebted  for  many  interesting  facts  re 
lating  to  the  early  settlers. 


1635.]  PROGRESS   OF   THE    COLONY.  505 

debtors  whose  goods  were  to  be  sold,  and  all  notices  calling  for  the 
public  attention.  Even  of  late  years,  curious  relic-hunters  have  dug 
from  the  decaying  trunk  the  rude  nails  which  thus  held  the  forgotten 
state  papers  of  two  centuries  ago. 

The  top  of  the  bluff,  according  to  tradition,  must  once  have  formed 
a  broad  square  before  the  state-house  doors,  where  the  people  assem 
bled,  and  the  little  force  mustered  which  was  detailed  for  defence ; 
where  punishments  were  inflicted,  and  proclamations  read  before  being 
posted.  But  the  ceaseless  wear  of  the  river  has  crumbled  away  a 
great  part  of  the  point,  and  only  a  small  space  now  lies  between  the 
building-site  and  the  water.  A  church,  built  in  the  last  century, 
stands  a  little  farther  back,  and  the  churchyard  extends  over  all  that 
is  left  of  the  plateau ;  the  ground  where  the  Maryland  Pilgrims  were 
called  together,  is  occupied  by  the  graves  of  their  descendants. 

In  the  valley,  still  further  up  the  inland  slope  than  the  Jesuit 
fathers'  church,  stood  the  principal  private  house,1  owned  by  The  GoTern. 
Calvert  or  one  of  the  leaders  in  the  colony,  a  well-built  struc-  or  s  House- 
ture  indeed  for  a  new  settlement,  for  its  walls  were  partly  standing 
within  the  memory  of  men  now  living.  In  the  middle,  two  stout  chim 
neys  gave  outlet  for  vast  fire-places  in  the  large  rooms  which  formed 
the  ground  floor  and  basement,  the  latter  paved  with  square  red  tiles. 
The  house  was  of  red  brick,  ornamented  here  and  there  with  black ; 
its  general  shape  was  square  ;  and  about  it,  giving  a  fortress-like  look 
to  the  place,  rose  a  stout  brick  wall  with  but  few  openings.  Near  by 
was  a  sudden  hollow  in  the  level  of  the  field,  from  the  bottom  of  which 
a  spring  gave  the  settlement  its  purest  water.  Still  farther  inland 
lay  a  little  ravine,  where  the  first  burial-ground  of  the  colony  was 
made,  and  the  Jesuit  fathers  piously  planted  the  black  cross  at  the 
head  of  every  Christian  grave. 

It  was  not  only  at  St.  Mary's,  however,  that  the  rapidly  increasing 
colony  began  to  take  on  this  appearance  of  prosperity.  Up  and  down 
the  east  bank  of  the  river  were  farms  and  plantations  ;  and  even  the 
opposite  shore  began  to  be  taken  up.  In  1635,  Lord  Balti- 

r  '  Land  grants 

more  seems  to  have  established  certain  terms  for  the  grant-  made  to  set- 

0  tiers. 

ing  of  land  to  settlers  :    a  thousand  acres,  "  erected  into  a 
Manor,"  but  subject  to  a  quitrent  of  a  pound  a  year,  to  every  man 
who  should  transport  to  the  colony  five  able  men  properly  provided ; 
a  hundred  acres,  subject  to  a  quitrent  of  two  shillings,  for  every  man 
who  should  pay  his  own  transportation,  and  the  same  for  each  servant 

1  Local  traditions  agree  in  calling  this  site,  on  which  even  men  of  middle  age  remem 
ber  the  ruins,  "  the  Governor's  House."  It  is  not  improbable,  however,  that  it  may  have 
been  the  brick  house  built  by  Cornwallis  in  1640,  which  is  especially  noticed  in  the  records 
because  of  its  superiority  to  its  neighbors.  It  was  very  possibly  occupied  by  later  gover 
nors  on  this  account. 


506  MARYLAND   UNDER   LEONARD   CALVERT.         [CHAP.  XIX. 

he  should  bring,  if  their  number  were  less  than  five ;  for  every  married 
man  a  hundred  acres  each  for  himself  and  his  wife,  and  fifty  for  each 
child  —  all  subject  to  a  quitrent  of  a  shilling  for  every  fifty  acres.  In 
1636,  while  these  conditions  were  retained  for  all  future  emigrants, 
still  further  grants  were  made  to  those  who  had  taken  part  in  the 
original  voyage  in  1633,  and  even  slight  additions  to  the  lands  of  all 
who  had  settled  in  the  colony  before  the  end  of  1635;  so  that  the 
pioneers  of  the  province  became  a  favored  class,  especially  as  those 
who  held  manors  were  permitted  the  feudal  privileges  of  holding 
courts-leet  and  courts-baron.  The  conditions  differed,  however,  in 
one  very  essential  point,  from  the  feudal  element  introduced  by  the 
Dutch  into  New  Netherlands,  the  smaller  land-holders  having  as  abso 
lute  a  title  from  the  government  as  the  larger ;  the  estate  of  each  was 
held  in  fee  simple,  to  the  owner  and  his  heirs  forever ;  there  was  no 
opportunity  for  the  abuses  of  the  feudal  class  of  tenures. 

By  the  end  of  1637,  the  region  about  St.  Mary's  is  referred  to  in  doc 
uments  as  the  "  county  "  of  that  name ;  while  enough  colonists  had 
settled  over  on  the  west  bank  of  St.  George's  (St.  Mary's)  River  to  en 
title  them  to  form  one  of  the  "hundreds"  into  which  the  county  had 
been  divided.  Several  mills  had  been  built  both  at  St.  Mary's  and  on 
out-lying  farms ;  the  crops  had  been  successful  year  after  year,  and 
the  cattle  and  poultry  brought  from  Virginia  had  increased  so  as  to 
give  the  whole  colony  a  plentiful  supply. 

The  inhabitants  had  now  become  so  numerous  that  a  more  complete 
code  of  laws  was  necessary  for  their  government.  The  Assem- 

Difference 

between  the    bly  of  1635  had  proposed  a  series  of  regulations  for  the  col- 

people  and  i  i  i  • 

the  lord        oiiy,  but  they  were  not  acceptable  to  the  proprietary,  who 

proprietor.  j"  ,       V  x  T 

refused  his  assent  to  them.  Two  years  later  Lord  Balti 
more  sent  out  suggestions  for  enactments  in  place  of  those  he  had  thus 
rejected  ;  and  to  consider  these  suggestions  the  second  Assembly  of  the 
province  was  summoned  to  meet  on  the  25th  of  January,  1638. 

The  freemen  duly  came  together  on  that  day,  some  appearing  in 
person,  nearly  as  many  by  proxy  ;  but  they  manifested  anything  but 
that  passive  acquiescence  which  had  been  expected  in  the  proposals  of 
their  ruler.  When  these  were  "  put  to  the  question,  whether  they 
should  be  received  as  laws  or  not,"  l  only  Leonard  Calvert  and  John 
Lewger,  with  the  twelve  proxies  they  held,  voted  for  them  ;  against 
them  there  were  "  thirty-seven  voices."  Lord  Baltimore's  proposals 
have  not  been  preserved,  but  it  is  probable  that  this  resistance  to  his 
will  was  rather  to  the  construction  of  the  charter  that  should  limit  to 
the  proprietary  the  right  of  initiating  laws,  than  a  dislike  for  any 

1  Transcription  from  the  original  record  of  Assembly  Proceedings,  1637-58,  in  Bozman, 
vol.  ii.,  p.  55. 


1638.] 


THE   SECOND   ASSEMBLY. 


507 


special  provision.1  This  belief  seems  sustained  by  the  recorded  fact, 
that  when  the  Assembly  immediately  afterward  proposed  "  to  agree 
upon  some  laws  till  [they]  could  hear  from  England  again,"  the  Presi 
dent  (Calvert)  denied  "  any  such  power  to  be  in  the  house ;  "  a  de 
cision  which  was  warmly  contested,  and  finally  overruled,  committees 
being  appointed  to  prepare  a  draft  to  be  submitted  to  Lord  Balti 


more. 


Long  delays  followed,  and  several  adjournments  of  the  Assembly 

intervened  before  this  draft  of  "twenty 
laws  "  was  finally  approved  and  signed 
by  the  members  on  March  24th,  the 
last  day  of  the  session  ;  but  in  the  mean 
time  the  body,  using  the  common  law 


Clayborne's  Petition. 

of  England  and  the  English  methods  of  procedure  in  default  of  a  code 
of  its  own,  busied  itself  with  matters  quite  as  pressing.  An  inquiry 
was  ordered  into  the  fight  between  the  pinnaces,  three  years  before  at 
Wighcomoco.  The  result  of  this  was  the  acquittal  of  all  the  Mary- 
landers,  the  formal  indictment  of  Clayborne,  and  a  bill  of  attainder 
passed  against  him  ;  while  Thomas  Smith,  next  in  rank  after  Ratcliff 

1  This  reasonable  belief  is  adopted  by  Grahame,  Bacon,  MacSherry,  Bozman,  Bancroft 
and  others  ;  but  taken  in  conjunction  with  other  acts  and  circumstances  of  the  time,  needs 
no  authority  to  justify  it. 


508  MARYLAND   UNDER  LEONARD   CALVERT.        [CHAP.  XIX. 

Warren  on  the  Virginian  vessel,  was  brought  to  the  bar,  tried,  and 
sentenced  to  be  hanged,  without  benefit  of  clergy.1 

Clayborne  himself,  meanwhile,  busily  at  work  in  England,  had 
come  near  to  turning  the  tables  on  his  Maryland  antago- 
inSguesIn  nists.  On  his  arrival  he  had  presented  to  the  king  a  peti 
tion,  setting  forth  his  "  wrongs  and  injuries,"  citing  the  li 
censes  under  which  he  had  acted  in  making  his  settlement  on  Kent 
Island,  and  pleading  his  cause  with  such  address,  that  he  very  nearly 
gained  not  only  the  end  he  had  first  sought,  but  an  enormous  grant 
besides.  The  king,  to  whom  he  had  held  out  hopes  of  a  direct  gain 
from  the  rents  he  would  pay  for  what  he  should  receive,  favored  him, 
though  not  in  any  very  definite  way ;  but  the  lords  commissioners  for 
plantations  finally  decided  sharply  against  him,  declaring  "  that  the 
ciayborne  lands  in  question  absolutely  belonged  to  Lord  Baltimore,  and 
defeated.  i\\^  no  plantation,  or  trade  with  the  Indians,  ought  to  be 
allowed  within  the  limits  of  his  patent,  without  his  permission.  And 
that  with  regard  to  violences  complained  of,  no  cause  for  any  relief 
appeared,  but  that  both  parties  should  be  left  to  the  ordinary  course 
of  justice."2  Clayborne  went  back  to  Virginia,  his  immediate  end  de 
feated,  but  his  purpose  as  positive  as  ever  ;  and  for  a  longer  time  than 
before,  though  he  struggled  against  the  restraints  upon  him,  he  was 
compelled  to  leave  his  enemies  in  peace. 

The  Maryland  Assembly  of  1638  was  not  more  fortunate  than  that 
of  three  years  before,  in  securing  the  assent  of  Lord  Bal- 
of  the1A™p  timore  to  the  code  of  laws  which  it  proposed  ;  but  it  won 
a  much  greater  victory  in  gaining  at  least  a  qualified  ac 
knowledgment  of  the  principle  at  issue.  For  the  proprietary,  immedi 
ately  after  receiving  the  report  of  the  session  at  St.  Mary's,  wrote  a 
letter  to  his  brother  the  governor,  in  which,  while  reserving  his  right 
of  dissent,  he  virtually  yielded  to  the  freemen  the  right  for  which  they 
had  contended.  That  the  letter  was  thus  interpreted  is  evident,  from 
the  fact  that  the  next  Assembly  regarded  the  question  as  settled  in 
their  favor,  and  did  not  again  discuss  it. 

The  colony  was  ere  long  disturbed  by  the  enmity  of  the  Susquehan- 
nah  Indians,  who,  jealous,  perhaps,  of  the  favor  shown  to  other  tribes, 
attacked  scattered  parties  of  colonists,  and  the  outlying  plantations. 
These  hostilities,  however,  assumed  no  very  formidable  aspect,  until 
1642.  Bands  of  the  provincial  militia  were  then  carefully  organized, 

"  Then  did  the  prisoner  demand  his  clergy  ;  but  it  was  answered  by  the  President  that 
clergy  could  not  be  allowed  in  his  crime,  and  if  it  might,  yet  now  it  was  demanded  too  late 
after  judgment."  Assembly  Proceedinqs,  etc. 

2  Report  of  the  Lords  Commissioners,  etc.,  quoted  by  Hazard,  Collections,  i.  p.  130; 
by  Bozman,  ii.,  note  xi.,  p.  584  ;  by  MacSherry,  p.  46,  and  elsewhere,  with  slight  variations. 
Comments  by  Bozman,  ii.  587. 


1642-44.] 


TROUBLE   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 


509 


and  occasionally  sent  out  to  make  retaliation  ;  but  the  Assembly  of 
July,  in  the  year  just  named,  —  there  had  been  others  in  1640, 
1641,  and  March,  1642,  but  their  acts  were  of  little  mo-  „ 

oiigut  ciis- 

ment,  —  was  the  first  which  appeared  actually  to  recognize  f^in! 
a   state    of    warfare    as    existing;    and    in    September,    the  dians- 
governor  formally  proclaimed  "  that  the  Susquihanowes,  Wicorneses 
and  Nanticoque  Indians  are  enemies  of  this  province,  and  as  such 
are  to    be   reputed   and  proceeded  against  by  all  persons."     Even 
then  the  fighting  seems  to  have  differed  little  from  the  occasional 


Indian   Attack  on   an  Outlying   Plantation. 


attacks  and  expeditions  of 
the  years  before,  though 
they  were  called,  "  an  In 
dian  war."  They  contin 
ued  from  this  time  until 
1644,  when  binding  trea 
ties  were  made  with  the 
hostile  tribes.  All  that  the 
colonists  suffered  from  these  hostilities,  however,  was  the  annoyance 
and  danger  inevitable  anywhere  in  the  neighborhood  of  savages,  rather 
than  such  a  devastating  and  terrible  calamity  as  almost  always  at 
tended  a  war  with  the  Indians  in  most  of  the  colonies.  Even  at  the 
height  of  the  hostile  feeling,  no  such  universal  measures  of  defence  or 
of  retaliation  were  necessary,  as  had  been  called  for  in  the  early  days 
of  Virginia,  Massachusetts,  and  New  Netherland. 

The  first  really  serious  shock  to  the  tranquillity  of  Maryland  came 
from  within  the  State  itself.  The  earnest,  yet  unusually  tolerant  Ro 
man  Catholics,  under  whose  leadership  the  settlement  had  been  begun, 
no  longer  ruled,  when  it  was  a  few  years  old,  over  an  harmonious 


510  MARYLAND   UNDER  LEONARD   CALVERT.      [CHAP.  XIX. 

people  agreeing  alike  in  politics  and  in  religion.     As  Maryland  had 

grown  and  prospered,  the  privileges  of  its  generous  land-grants  and 

liberal  charter  had  been  shared  with  men  of  all  shades  of  conviction. 

There  had  been  Protestants  and  even  Puritans  in  the  colony  from 

its  very  foundation,  though  at  first  they  were  very  few.     The 

Religious  J.  °  J  J 

toleration  of  toleration  with  which  they  had  been  treated  and  the  pains 
taken  to  protect  them  in  their  rights  were  from  the  begin 
ning  remarkable.  In  1638,  for  instance,  it  is  recorded  that  the  Cath 
olic  governor  and  council  severely  fined  an  overseer  for  speaking  abu 
sively  of  a  book  of  sermons  l>y  an  English  Puritan  ("the  silver- 
tongued  Smith,"  a  preacher  of  much  note),  which  certain  of  his 
subordinates  were  reading  ;  and  similar  examples  of  an  impartial  spirit 
appear  elsewhere  in  the  early  annals.  Protestants  had  been  mem 
bers  of  the  Assembly  and  members  of  the  council ;  nor  does  there  seem 
to  be  any  indication  of  disagreement,  in  the  first  few  years,  between 
them  and  their  fellows  on  public  questions.  But  as  time  went  on,  and 
its  advantages  were  better  understood,  Maryland  became  a  very  asy 
lum  for  the  persecuted  of  other  provinces.  Puritans  who  had  been 
harshly  treated  in  Virginia  removed  across  the  Maryland  line,  gladly 
accepting  so  near  a  refuge  ;  and  to  those  in  Massachusetts  who  should 
be  persecuted  for  any  independent  opinions,  Calvert  sent  a  special  in 
vitation  to  make  their  homes  under  his  government.  The  self-in 
terest  of  the  proprietary,  and  a  desire  to  hurry  on  the  growth  of  the 
colony,  doubtless  had  much  to  do  with  this  ;  yet  it  is  impossible  not 
to  acknowledge  the  broad  spirit  of  such  a  course ;  it  would  have  been 
wise  statesmanship  had  it  not  been  a  little  beyond  the  appreciation  of 
many  who  profited  by  it. 

Differences  between  the  two  parties  were  inevitable,  and  these  wi 
dened  into  an  impassable  breach  as  the  conflict  between  king  and  Par 
liament  grew  more  and  more  intense  in  England,  and  the  growing 
power  of  the  Parliament  at  home  stimulated  its  adherents  through  all 
the  colonies. 

The  outbreak  of  hostilities  in  England,  in  1642,  hastened  the  crisis 
of  these  discontents.  Lord  Baltimore  was  a  supporter  of  the 

Effect  of  the  •     i  i        .    /•  •.  i 

Revolution  king,  though  he  seems  to  have  tried,  and  at  nrst  with  more 
on  Wy-  success  than  many  others,  to  keep  on  fair  terms  with  the  Par 
liament  also ;  and  this  especially  in  matters  relating  to  his 
American  grant,  for  the  very  existence  of  which  he  had  cause  to  fear 
in  case  of  the  Parliament's  victory.  As  the  power  of  that  body  ap 
peared  more  formidable,  the  greatest  care  was  needed  in  the  govern 
ment  of  the  province  itself,  lest  the  complaints  of  the  discontented 
Puritans  should  grow  loud  enough  to  attract  parliamentary  attention 
to  the  colony's  affairs ;  —  attention  which  would  be  fatal  to  the  pro- 


1643.]  CLAYBORNE' S   OPPORTUNITY.  511 

prietor,  if  the  English  Commons  should  think  fit  to  interfere  in  favor 
of  their  Maryland  adherents,  and  support  them  in  an  attempt  to  gain 
control.  It  was  necessary  to  conciliate,  and  probably  for  this  purpose 
the  proprietary  wrote  particularly  in  1642,  that  "  no  ecclesiastic  in  the 
province  ought  to  expect,  nor  is  Lord  Baltimore,  nor  any  of  his  officers, 
although  they  are  Roman  Catholics,  obliged  in  conscience  to  allow  to 
such  ecclesiastics  any  more  or  other  privileges  ....  than  is  allowed 
by  his  majesty  or  officers  to  like  persons  in  England."  l  This  and  sim 
ilar  declarations  may  have  produced  an  effect  at  home ;  but  in  the 
province  itself  the  parties  were  too  strongly  divided  to  admit  of  con 
cession  or  compromise.  Puzzled  by  the  various  and  contradictory  de 
mands  of  the  time,  Leonard  Calvert  sailed  for  England  in  April,  1643, 
to  consult  in  person  with  his  brother,  leaving  Giles  Brent,  a  councillor, 
to  govern  as  his  deputy. 

While  affairs  were  thus  confused,  Clayborne,  quiet  for  a  while,  and 
holding  a  life-appointment  as  treasurer  of  Virginia,  which  he  Ciayl)orne>g 
had  obtained  by   favoring  the   king  when  hostilities   first  f^reuwL1? 
broke  out,  seized  his  opportunity  of  retaliation  against  Mary-  tlon- 
land  by  stirring  up  the  parliamentary  faction  in  Maryland  to  a  rebel 
lion  against  the  government  of  Baltimore.     His  designs  were  aided  by 
an  unforeseen  event.      In  1643,  the  king,  then  at  Oxford,  commis 
sioned  Lord  Baltimore,  through  his  colonial  officers,  to  seize  any  ships 
from   London   or  belonging  to  the   parliament  party,   on  which  his 
people  might  be  able  to  lay  hands.     About  the  beginning  of  the  next 
year  such  a  seizure  was  actually  made  by  order  of  Calvert's 
deputy,  Brent,  the  vessel  of  one  Richard  Ingle  being  cap-  Puttunent- 
tured  on  its   arrival  at  St.  Mary's,  though  its   commander 
escaped  and  made  his  way  to  England.     Brent  issued  a  proclamation 
requiring  him  to  appear  and  answer  a  charge  of  treason  ;  and  endeav 
ored  to  exact  from  the  captured  crew  an  oath  against  Parliament,  and 
a  promise  to  take  the  ship  to  Bristol,  which  the  king  then  held. 

Amid  the  intense  excitement  which  followed  this  step,  Clayborne 
took  advantage  of  the  always  hostile  disposition  of  the  people  Olaybome 
of  the  Isle  of  Kent.  He  seems  to  have  had  no  difficulty  in  ^S^of" 
again  possessing  himself  of  that  disputed  region.  When  Kentlsland- 
Calvert  returned  in  1644  he  found  the  province  in  a  state  of  anarchy, 
the  factions  almost  at  open  war,  the  Puritan  party  in  unconcealed 
rebellion  against  his  government,  and  the  old  and  dreaded  enemy  of 
the  colony  in  possession  of  his  claims  within  her  borders.  Moreover, 
he  had  hardlv  reached  Maryland  when  Ingle  arrived  from  England 
in  the  ship  Reformation,  commanded  by  him  under  a  letter  of  marque 
from  the  Parliament,  —  prepared  to  venture  again,  as  his  petition  to 

1  Neill's  Terra  Marice,  p.  107. 


512 


MARYLAND   UNDER  LEONARD   CALVERT.       [CHAP.  XIX. 


that  body  declared  he  had  done  before,  "  his  life  and  fortune  in  .... 
assisting  the  well-affected  Protestants  against  the  tyrannical  govern 
ment."  All  the  parliament  party  in  the  province  rose  to  the  aid  of 
him  and  of  Clayborne ;  and  the  governor  and  council,  with  the  chief 
of  their  supporters,  were  driven  from  the  colony  and  forced  to  take 
refuge  in  Virginia.  Captain  Edward  Hill,  a  Virginian,  was  made 
governor ;  but  the  control  of  the  conquered  province  was  virtually  in 
the  hands  of  the  two  leaders  of  the  insurrection. 

Their  position,  however,  was  not  strong  enough  to  be  a  comfortable 

one.     History  and  tradition  alike  speak  of  their  rule  as  turbulent, 

though  all  but  its  mere  outline  is  unrecorded.     The  Catho- 

Turbulent 

rule  in  the    hcs,  among  whom  their  bitterest  opponents  were  of  course 

formerly 

to  be  found,  still  formed  a  considerable  part  of  the  popu 
lation  ;  and  the  hope  which  they  doubtless  nourished  of  a 
speedy  restoration  of  the  proprietary,  was  fostered  by  the  oppressive 
acts  of  Clayborne's  government.  It  is  probable,  though  it  cannot 


peaceful 
province 


Chancellor's  Point  from    St.  Inigoe's. 

be  fully  decided  by  the  scanty  evidence  tradition  furnishes,  that  the 
Catholic  priests,  long  so  powerful  a  class  at  St.  Mary's,  withdrew  at 
this  time  from  the  town,  and  established  the  Jesuit  mission  farther 
from  the  stormy  centre  of  affairs,  where  interference,  if  not  confisca 
tion  of  their  lands,  was  daily  to  be  feared. 

At  the  lower  end  of  the  bay  of  St.  Ignatius  (of  whose  name  St. 
Inigoe  is  an  old  and  once  common  corruption),  was  a  bluff  much  like 
that  at  St.  Mary's,  though  lower  and  less  picturesque.  From  it,  look 
ing  to  the  north  across  the  bay,  could  be  seen  the  point  of  first  landing 
(Chancellor's  Point)  ;  and  to  the  south  the  view  extended  to  the 
mouth  of  St.  Mary's  River.  It  was  a  commanding  site  ;  and  on  it, 
though  whether  before  or  just  after  this  period  is  not  certain,  Governor 
Calvert  erected  a  fort  which  effectually  guarded  the  approach  to  the 
town  above.  Near  or  within  the  fort  stood  a  mill,  and  about  it  a  few 
scattered  buildings.  No  ruins  of  fort  or  houses  remain,  save  a  few 


1643.]  RESTORATION   OF   CALVERT.  513 

scattered  bricks  and  hewn  stones  ;  but  several  cannon,  perhaps  placed 
on  the  ramparts  in  the  time  of  Calvert  himself,  have  been  drawn 
from  the  river,  where  the  washing  away  of  the  sandy  bluff  had  left 
them. 

It  is  to  this  point  that  the  Jesuits  perhaps  removed  their  chief  sta 
tion  during  Clayborne's  usurpation.     They  are  found  there 
but  a  few  years  later  ;  and  from  the  time  of  these  events  St.   sionatst. 
Inigoe's  and  not  St.  Mary's  appears  as  their  headquarters. 
Here    they  built  a  chapel  on    a  site    still  pointed    out ;    and  a  new 
churchyard,  to  which  the  Catholic  dead  of  the  colony  seem  to  have 
been  carried  after  this  change,  still  makes  green  a  broad  field  of  wheat 
near  by.     A  Jesuit  mission  is  still  kept  up  at  St.  Inigoe's,  and  the 
traditions  of  the  place  make  the   present  chapel  the  third  in  order 
from  that  of  the  early  settlers. 


Church  near  the  Site  of  the   First  Jesuit  Chapel. 

The  rule  of  Clayborne's  governor  and  his  supporters  was,  however, 
to  be  of  short  duration.  During  the  winter  following  his  flight,  Cal 
vert  collected  his  adherents  on  the  Virginia  border,  and  though  his 
force  was  small,  he  so  skilfully  surprised  St.  Mary's  in  April,  while 
Clayborne  was  at  Kent  Island  and  Ingle  probably  in  England,1  that 
he  captured  the  place  with  but  little  resistance  or  bloodshed,2  The  proprie. 
and  was  reinstated  in  the  governorship  as  suddenly  as  he  mentgreln-n 
had  been  displaced.  A  period  of  disorder  and  partial  an-  stated- 
archy  followed,  which  left  the  colony  at  Calvert's  return,  exhausted 
and  impoverished  ;  even  the  malcontents  doubtless  were  glad  to  be  again 
under  the  quieter  government  of  the  proprietary.  The  victorious 
governor's  first  care  seems  to  have  been  to  go  in  person  to  Kent 
Island,  attend  to  its  complete  subjection,  and  put  over  it  a  deputy  of 
his  own  appointment,  one  Robert  Vaughan,  a  Protestant.  Clayborne 

1  Neill,  Terra  Maria,  p.  112. 

2  It  is  evident  that  there  was  some  fighting,  at  least,  from  the  expressions  in  a  subsequent 
correspondence  between  Governor  Greene  aud  Sir  Wm,  Berkeley,  quoted  at  length  by  Bow 
man,  vol.  ii.,  note  Ivii.,  pp.  637,  899. 


514  MARYLAND   UNDER  LEONARD   CALVERT.         [CHAP.  XIX. 

appears  to  have  escaped  to  Virginia,  and  Ingle  to  have  remained  in 
England,  where  three  years  later  he  preferred  charges  before  the  Par 
liament  against  Lord  Baltimore's  administration  of  Maryland  affairs, 
but  without  any  definite  result.  All  but  these  two  and  their  immedi 
ate  followers  doubtless  acquiesced  quietly  enough  in  the  rule  of  the 
apparently  lenient  Calvert,  for  no  records  of  attempted  punishment 
appear  in  connection  with  the  governor's  return,  and  three  years  later 
an  act  of  general  amnesty  was  passed.  Only  one  person  connected 
with  the  matter  adopted  a  course  that  calls  for  special  mention.  Cap 
tain  Hill,  who  had  acted  as  governor  while  Calvert  was  deposed,  had 
the  audacity,  some  time  after  the  restoration  of  peace,  to  claim  a  salary 
and  other  compensation  for  his  services  in  the  office,  on  the  ground 
that  he  had  occupied  it  as  Calvert's  representative,  the  council  having 
power  to  nominate  such  a  one  in  case  of  the  governor's  absence.  In  a 
long  "petition"  he  contradicted  himself  by  calling  Calvert's  return 
an  "  invasion,"  represented  himself  as  still  entitled  to  his  office,  and  put 
together  a  strange  tissue  of  absurdities  which  were  promptly  rejected 
by  the  governor's  successor  ;  for  the  correspondence  did  not  take  place 
until  death  had  put  a  sudden  end  to  Calvert's  long  and  able  rule. 
The  governor  died  on  the  ninth  of  June,  1647,  after  an  illness  that 
seems  to  have  seized  him  on  his  return  from  the  Isle  of  Kent. 

Death  of 

Governor  "  Lying  upon  his  death-bed,  yet  in  perfect  memory,"  he  ap 
pointed  Thomas  Green,  one  of  his  council,  to  be  his  succes 
sor,  and  Mistress  Margaret  Brent,  an  unmarried  sister  of  that  Giles 
Brent  who  had  once  acted  as  his  deputy,  to  be  his  administratrix.1 
It  is  possible,  as  has  been  suggested  in  comments  on  this  appoint 
ment,2  that  the  Brent  family  were  related  to  the  Calverts ;  at  all 
events,  they  stood  around  the  dying  governor's  bed  when  his  last 
wishes  were  expressed ;  and  Mistress  Brent  subsequently  proved  her 
self  worthy  of  the  trust  reposed  in  her,  if  not  by  her  judgment,  at 
least  by  her  remarkable  strength  of  will  and  almost  masculine  energy 
and  understanding  in  business. 

With  Calvert's  administration  ends  that  earliest  period  of  Mary 
land's  history,  which  the  loss  of  records  and  the  absence  of  personal 
narratives  render  somewhat  more  dim  and  vague  than  the  busy  begin- 
Dearth  of  nings  of  its  sister  colonies.  The  great  outlines  of  its  growth 
tomfaiithor-  remain,  but  we  must  fill  them  out  by  inference  rather  than 
by  knowledge.  Nothing  of  that  abundance  of  picturesque 
detail,  of  quaintly  told  personal  experience,  of  description  of  the  every 
day  life  of  the  settlers,  which  gives  its  vividness  to  the  early  history 

1  Kilty's  Landholder's  Assistant,  p.    104,  in  Bozman,  vol.  ii.,  p.  315;  and  Neill's  Terra 
MaricK,  112,  and  113  note. 

2  Bo/man,  vol.  ii.,  p.  307,  note. 


I647-]  DEATH   OF   GOVERNOR   CALVERT.  515 

of  Virginia  and  New  England,  had  come  down  to  us  from  the  quieter 
Catholic  province.     The  Jesuit  Father  White's  simple  and  beautiful 


Fac-simile  of  MS.  Records.1 

1  For  many  years  the  MS.  records  of  Maryland,  to  which  Bozman  and  others  writing  in 
the  early  part  of  this  century  appear  to  have  had  access,  have  been  lost.  In  December,  1  875, 
a  box  of  old  papers,  supposed  to  be  worthless,  was  to  be  sold  from  the  record  office  at  An 
napolis,  when,  on  a  careful  examination  of  its  contents,  a  portion  of  the  MS.  covering  a 
considerable  period  subsequent  to  .Calvert's  death  was  discovered,  in  an  almost  complete 
state  of  preservation.  Without  disclosing  any  new  facts  of  moment,  it  bears  witness  to  the 
correctness  of  Bozman's  transcripts.  In  the  text  a  fac-simile  is  given  of  a  part  of  the  page 
bearing  Clerk  Bretton's  record  of  Calvert's  death-bed  appointment  of  Green.  It  runs  as 
follows  :  — 

Whereas  by  Commiso?  from  ye  R*  Honble  Cecill,  L<?  Propr  of  ye  Province  of  Mary  Land 
to  ye  late  Gouernor  Leonard  Caluart  EsqTe  bearing  date  ye  18th  Septembr  1644  att  his  Lps 
[Lordship's]  Fort  att  S*.  Maries  in  ye  s"?  Province  Heeye  sd  Leon.  Calvert  was  authorized, 
in  case  hee  should  happen  to  dye,  or  be  absent  from  time  to  time,  out  of  ye  sd  Province  to 
nominate  elect  &  appoint  such  an  able  person  inhabiting  &  residing  wthin  ye  sd  Province 
(as  he  on  his  discretion  should  make  choice  of,  &  thinke  fitt)  to  be  Governor  of  ye  sd  Prov 
ince.  These  are  therefore  to  publish  &  declare  to  all  those  whom  it  may  concerne  y'  ye  sd 
Leon.  Calvert  did  by  word  of  mouth  on  the  Ninth  day  of  June  1647  (lying  uppon  his  death 
bed,  yett  in  perfect  memory)  nominate  &  appoint  Thomas  Greene  Esqr  one  of  ye  Counsell  of 
this  Province,  to  be  Governor  of  ye  same,  wth  all  ye  same  authority  &  power  of  goverm'  as 
he  ye  sd  Leonard  Calvert  was  authorized  by  his  Lps  Commisn  to  conferre  uppon  him.  As 
by  ye  oaths  of  Mrs  Margaret  &  Mary  Brent,  Francis  Ankesill  &  James  Linsey  (who  were 
all  then  present  wth  him  att  ye  same  time)  is  averred  to  be  true. 

Teste  me  Willm  Bretton,  Clk. 


516  MARYLAND   UNDER   LEONARD   CALVERT.         [CHAP.  XIX. 

journal  throws  a  pleasant  light  upon  the  settlement's  earliest  days ; 
but  the  story  of  his  own  and  his  companions'  journeys  among  the 
Indians  along  the  Potomac,  of  their  pious  devotion  and  endurance, 
their  hardships  and  bloodless  victories,  hardly  belongs  to  the  annals  of 
the  State  itself,  but  rather  to  the  history  of  that  remarkable  priesthood 
whose  adventures  read  like  passages  of  a  romance. 

Enough  remains  of  the  annals  of  Lord  Baltimore's  colony,  however, 
to  show  most  plainly  those  distinctive  features  which  separated  its 
founders  sharply  from  all  the  other  strongly-marked  types  from  which 
the  varying  races  of  the  future  nation  sprang.  Here  were  men 
trained  in  a  different  school  from  New  Englanders  or  Virginians; 
men  with  a  singular  mixture  of  religious  enthusiasm,  culture,  practical 
shrewdness,  and  liberal  statesmanship ;  far  enough  in  advance  of  their 
age  to  take  warning  from  the  errors  of  others,  and  while  they  founded 
a  province  in  which  were  mingled  feudal  and  popular,  despotic  and 
constitutional  institutions,  to  administer  it  with  such  prudence  that  it 
grew  strong  and  gained  permanence  more  quickly  and  tranquilly  than 
any  of  its  predecessors. 


Shawmut. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

MASSACHUSETTS   BAY. 

FRESH  EMIGRATION  TO  MASSACHUSETTS.  —  A  NEW   CHARTER. — ARRIVAL  OF   HIG- 

GINSON   AND    SKELTON.  THE  FlRST   CHURCH   AT   SALEM. — THE  CASE  OF  JOHN 

AND  SAMUEL  BROWNE.  —  THEY  ARE  ORDERED  BACK  TO  ENGLAND  BY  ENDICOTT. 
—  THE  COUNCIL'S  REBUKE.  —  PROPOSED  TRANSFER  OF  THE  GOVERNMENT  OF  THE 
COLONY  TO  NEW  ENGLAND. — PROBABLE  MOTIVES  OF  THE  COUNCIL  IN  PROCURING 
THE  PATENT.  —  THE  CAMBRIDGE  CONFERENCE.  —  WINTHROP  CHOSEN  GOVERNOR. — 
DEPARTURE  FOR  NEW  ENGLAND.  —  His  FAREWELL  ADDRESS  TO  ENGLISH  CHURCH 
MEN.  —  OLDHAM  AND  BRERETON'S  PATENTS.  —  SETTLEMENTS  IN  AND  ABOUT  BOS 
TON. —  OLD  SETTLERS  ABOUT  THE  BAY.  —  THE  COMING  OF  ROGER  WILLIAMS. 

IN  June,  1629,  three  vessels  entered  the  harbor  of  Salem,  followed 
a  few  days  later   by  three   others.     They  carried,  besides  Arrivalof 
their  crews,  four  hundred  and  six  men,  women,  and  children,   n|^gcatlosa_ 
one  hundred  and  forty  head  of  cattle,  forty  goats,  a  large  lem- 
stock  of  provisions,  of  tools,  of  arms,  of  all  things  necessary  to  plant  a 
a  colony.1     No  enterprise  so  well  appointed  as  this  at  the  start  had 
heretofore  been  sent  to  North  America. 

With  the  exception  of  the  Plymouth  people,  all  the  colonies  hitherto 
had  been  commercial  adventures,  managed  in  an  office  in  London.  In 
deed,  Plymouth  even  was  not  without  this  purely  trading  purpose, 

1  This  is  Prince's  statement  —  in  the  Chronology  —  on  the  authority  of  the  colonial  rec 
ords,  and  according  to  the  warrant  of  the  lord-treasurer,  for  the  transportation.  Dudley,  in 
his  letter  to  the  Countess  of  Lincoln  (vol.  ii.  Force's  Historical  Tracts  and  Young's  Chron 
icles),  says,  "  about  300  people  ;  "  Francis  Higginson,  in  his  New  England's  Plantation,  says, 
"we  brought  with  us  about  two  hundred  passengers,"  but  he  refers  doubtless  to  the  first 
three  ships  only. 


518  MASSACHUSETTS   BAY.  [CHAP.  XX. 

which,  however  necessary  to  its  making  a  beginning,  was  not  its  im 
pelling  motive,  while  the  shrewd  men  who  governed  there  soon  saw 
that  it  must  be  rendered  subsidiary  to  the  interests  of  the  colonists 
themselves,  who  were  men  and  not  machinery.  In  Virginia,  already 
for  twenty  years,  the  experiment  —  presently  to  be  repeated  in  Mary 
land  —  of  founding  a  commonwealth  upon  the  labor  of  bondsmen  and 
the  production  of  one  great  staple  of  trade,  had  proved  to  be  success 
ful,  so  far  as  it  was  successful  at  all,  only  in  spite  of  its  inherent 
viciousness.  New  Netherland  was  a  great  Dutch  trading-post,  where 
patroons  took  the  place  of  tobacco-planters  ;  Dutch  boors  served  in 
stead  of  servants  for  a  term  of  years,  sometimes  taken  from  the 
English  jails,  or  scraped  together  from  the  most  wretched  of  the  Eng 
lish  poor.  Just  so  far  as  this  trading  spirit  was  subordinated  to  some 
higher  purpose ;  just  so  far  as  men  were  held  higher  than  merchandise 
and  the  poor  man's  chance  as  of  greater  value  than  the  rich  man's 
opportunity,  there  these  early  colonies  struck  deepest  root,  and  became 
the  soonest  strong  and  prosperous. 

Charles  I.  had  been  king  only  about  four  years,  but  there  were 

already  signs  in  England,  significant  enough  to  those  who  were  wise, 

of  coming  trouble.     Influences    and    events  were   gradually 

Character  .  J 

and  causes  preparing  men  tor  a  stormy  future,  and  the  number  of  those 
Puritan  who  sought  to  escape  from  it  was  rapidly  increasing.  These 

emigration.  1-1          i         T-.-I       •  i  i 

persons  were  not  like  the  Pilgrims,  bound  together  as  with 
hooks  of  steel,  by  years  of  exile  and  poverty,  but  they,  nevertheless 
were  Puritans,  earnest  Protestants  against  the  corruptions  and  for 
malities  of  the  established  church ;  some  even  Non-conformists  ;  and 
all  turning  their  faces  wistfully  toward  the  new  land,  where  perhaps 
distance  and  obscurity  might  secure  to  them  religious  and  political 
freedom  —  at  least  would  take  them  out  of  the  thick  of  the  evils 
which  they  knew  could  not  be  escaped  much  longer  at  home. 

The  movement,  begun  at  Dorchester  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  White,  with 

no  more  ambitious  purpose  than  to  plant  a  colony  of  fish- 

The  Massa 
chusetts  Bay   ermen  at  Cape  Ann  ;    growing    then   to  the   larger  project 

under  Endicott  with  a  grant  of  lands  from  the  Plymouth 
Company,  had  assumed  other  proportions  under  a  royal  patent.  The 
new  corporation  was  styled  "  The  Governor  and  Company  of  the 
Massachusetts  Bay  in  New  England."1 

Of  this  company  Matthew  Cradock,2  a  London  merchant,  was  the 

1  By  Massachusetts  Bay  was  understood,  at  that  time,  what  is  now  called  Boston  Har 
bor,  from  Nahant  to  Point  Alderton.  Winthrop'a  History  of  New  England,  by  James 
Savage,  vol.  i.,  p.  27. 

'2  Eudicott's  wife  was  a  cousin  of  Cradock's.  The  exposure  and  hardships  of  the  first 
winter  were  a  sore  affliction  to  Endicott's  people,  and  among  those  who  died,  it  is  sup 
posed,  was  Mrs.  Endicott.  Dr.  Fuller,  the  physician  at  New  Plymouth,  was  sent  by  Gov- 


1629.] 


MAP    OF  NEW   ENGLAND. 


519 


FAC-SIMILE      FROM   SMITH'S   GENERAL   HISTORY. 


520  MASSACHUSETTS   BAY.  [CHAP.  XX. 

governor  in  England.  These  six  ships  —  one  was  the  Mayflower^ 
which,  nine  years  before,  had  carried  the  Pilgrims  to  Plymouth  — 
arriving  in  June,  at  Salem,  with  this  well-appointed  colony,  were 
sent  out  by  the  new  company.  The  grant  made  by  its  patent  was 
from  the  Merrimack  to  the  Charles  River.  Endicott  was  confirmed 
by  the  directors  in  London  as  the  governor  of  the  colony  already 
planted  at  Salem.  "  The  propagating  of  the  Gospel,"  he  was  told  in 
the  first  letter  of  instructions,  "  is  the  thing  we  do  profess 
cottmade  above  all  to  be  our  aim  in  settling  this  Plantation."  Cer 
tainly  to  no  more  zealous  hands  than  Endicott's  could  such 
a  work  be  entrusted.  There  was  neither  weakness  nor  hesitation  in 

his  method  of  propagandism,  and 
none  who  stood  in  his  way  need  ex 
pect  mercy. 

He  was  to  be  aided,  his  instruc 
tions  told  him,  by  "  a  plentiful  pro 
vision  of  godly  ministers."  There 
were  four  in  the  fleet,  three  of 
whom  were  appointed  to  be  mem 
bers  of  the  Council.  The  fourth, 
the  Reverend  Ralph  Smith,  was 
rather  permitted  to  go  than  encour 
aged,  as  it  was  found  that  there  was 
a  "  difference  in  judgment  in  some 

Endicott.  -   .  ...  .   .  -.      -  ' 

things      between  him  and  the  other 

ministers.  What  that  difference  was  they  do  not  choose  to  say,  but 
it  was  only  that  Smith  was  a  pronounced  Separatist  in  England,  and 
the  others  were  not  till  they  were  on  the  other  side  of  the  ocean. 
"  Unless  he  will  be  conformable  to  our  government,"  was  the  order  of 
the  letter  of  instructions,  "  suffer  him  not  to  remain  within  the  limits 
of  our  grant."  Mr.  Smith  was  clearly  not  needed,  and,  whether  sent 
thither  or  not,  we  next  hear  of  him  living  with  his  family,  in  destitu 
tion  apparently,  at  Nantasket.  Some  of  the  Plymouth  people  found 
him  there,  and  moved  with  pity,  took  him  home  with  them,  and  for 
several  years  he  was  their  minister.  If  there  was  any  fault  in  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Smith  it  was  probably  an  excess  of  stupidity,  for  in  zeal  he 
seems  to  have  made  himself  in  no  way  offensive.  He  is  not  heard 
of  again  for  several  years,  when  "  partly  by  his  own  willingness,  as 
thinking  it  too  heavy  a  burden,  and  partly  at  the  desire,  and  by  the 
persuasion  of  others,"  •  —  says  the  truthful  Bradford,  but  with  more 

ernor  Bradford  to  minister  to  the  Salem  people  in  their  distress  The  scurrilous  Morton 
of  Merry  Mount,  who  spared  nobody,  calls  Fuller  "  Dr.  Noddy,"  who,  he  says,  "  did  a  great 
cure  for  Captain  Littleworth  [Endicott].  He  cured  him  of  a  disease  called  a  wife." 


1629.]  •    „  RELIGION   AND   POLITICS.  521 

of  euphemism  than  he  often  used,  —  he  resigned  his  place  of  min 
ister. 

Apparently  it  was  not  Mr.  Smith's  doctrines,  but  his  acting  up  to 
them  by  separation,  that  made  the  London  Council  cautious.  And 
caution  was  no  doubt,  wise,  for  Archbishop  Laud  was  watchful,  and 
Charles  easily  offended.  There  was  no  hesitation,  however,  when 
once  the  colonists  were  in  their  new  home,  in  showing  how  they  con 
strued  the  Council's  advice  to  propagate  the  gospel.  The  State  was 
to  rest  on  the  Church,  and  the  church  they  chose  to  establish  was  not 
the  Church  of  England.  "  Touching  your  judgment  of  the  outward 
form  of  God's  worship,"  — 
Endicott  wrote  to  Governor 
Bradford,  a  month  before 
the  arrival  of  the  ministers,  -««*l- 

who  were  to  be  of  his  coun- 
cil,  and  with  whom  came  the 
instructions  from  London 

—  "it  is,  as  far  as  I  can  yet  ' 

gather,  no  other  than  is  war-  signature  of  Endicott. 

ranted  by  the  evidence  of  truth,  and  the  same  which  I  have  professed 
and  maintained  ever  since  the  Lord  in  mercy  revealed  Himself  unto 
me."  1  When  the  ministers  arrived  he  and  they  acted  in  accordance 
with  this  avowal. 

Two  of  them,  Messrs.  Skelton  and  Higginson,  were  not  Separatists, 
but,  for  the  distinction  was  carefully  preserved,  Non-Conformists. 
The  third,  Mr.  Bright,  was  neither,  but  still  a  Conformist.  Before 
six  weeks  had  passed  the  religious  character  of  the  colony  was  deter 
mined  ;  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer  was  held ;  Skelton  was  chosen 
pastor  and  Higginson  teacher;  the  Plymouth  Church  was  invited 
to  send  delegates  to  the  installation,  and  Bradford  and  some  others 
"  gave  them  the  right  hand  of  fellowship,  wishing  all  prosperity,  and 
a  blessed  success  to  such  good  beginnings."  A  Confession  of  Religi0nand 
Faith  and  Covenant,  according  to  the  Holy  Scriptures  —  one  ^^ 
article  of  which  was  upon  the  Duty  and  Power  of  Magistrates  colony- 
in  matters  of  Religion  —  was  adopted ;  the  book  of  Common  Prayer 
was  discarded  ;  the  rite  of  baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper  were  admin 
istered  without  the  ceremonies  prescribed  in  the  ritual ;  admission  to 
the  church  was  regulated  in  accordance  with  the  judgment  of  the  elders, 
and  the  life  and  conversation  of  men  were  subjects  of  discipline.  They 
were  neither  Separatists  nor  Anabaptists,  they  said ;  it  was  not  the 
Church  of  England,  nor  its  ordinances  that  they  abandoned,  but  its 
corruptions  and  disorders ;  and  being  now  where  they  had  their  liberty, 

1  Bradford's  History  of  Plymouth  Plantation,  p.  265. 


522 


MASSACHUSETTS   BAY. 


[CHAP.  XX. 


The  Old   Planter's   House.2 


they  neither  could  nor  would  submit  to  them  because  "they  judged 
the  imposition  of  those  things  to  be  sinful  corruptions  in  the  word  of 
God."1 

This  was  the  understanding  of  Endicott  and  his  friends  as  to  the 
best  and  true  method  of  "  propagating  the  Gospel  "  in  the  new  planta 
tion.  The  London  Council 
was  wary  and  slow ;  the 
colonists  were  free,  and  the 
archbishop's  arm  was  not 
long  enough  to  reach  across 
the  Atlantic. 

To  these  proceedings  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Bright  gave  no 
countenance.  He  quietly 
withdrew  to  Charlestown  ; 
but  there  also  the  mother 
church  was  without  a  shel 
ter,  and  in  the  course  of 
the  year  he  returned  to  England.  This  silent  protest  seems  to  have 
satisfied  his  sense  of  duty.  But  there  were  others  of  a  more  aggres 
sive,  if  not  a  more  earnest  spirit. 

These  were  two  brothers,  John  and  Samuel  Browne,  the  first  a  law 
yer,  the  other  a  merchant,  "  men  of  estates  and  men  of  parts 
and  port,"  says  Morton.  Both  were  appointed  in  London 
to  be  members  of  the  council  of  thirteen  to  assist  Endicott 
in  the  government  of  the  colony,  and  both  were  commended 
to  his  consideration  and  confidence  by  Cradock.  They  belonged  to 
and  believed  in  the  Church  of  England,  and  would  have  nothing  to 
do  with  this  "  Reformed  Congregation,"  created  by  the  governor  and 
the  two  clergymen.  Nor  was  theirs  merely  a  negative  protest ;  calling 
about  them  the  few  whose  views  and  feelings  were  in  sympathy 
with  their  own,  they  held  separate  meetings  and  worshipped  God 
according  to  the  ritual.  But  the  liberty  which  the  Salem  Noncon 
formists  loved  for  themselves  was  not  broad  enough  to  include  tol 
eration  for  others.  Endicott  summoned  the  Brownes  before  him. 
Their  course  was  a  "  disturbance  "  to  the  peace  of  the  colony,  and  they 
were  put  upon  their  defence. 

1  Morton's  Memorial,  where  the  fullest  account  is  given  of  the  incidents  attending  the 
formation  of  the  first  church  in  Salem. 

2  The  old  Planter's  House  was  originally  built  at  Cape  Ann  by  the  Dorchester  people. 
One  Richard  Brackenbury  testifies  in  1680  that  the  London  Company  having  bought  out 
the  Dorchester  Company,  sent  a  party  to  Cape  Ann  to  pull  down  the  house  and  remove 
it  to  Salem  for  Endicott's  use.     It  was  accordingly  removed  to  Salem.     In  1792  it  was 
altered,  but  the  above  cut  shows  it  as  originally  built. 


Dissent  and 
protest  of 
John  and 
Samuel 
Browne. 


1629.]  JOHN   AND   SAMUEL  BROWNE.  523 

Their  defence  was  an  accusation.  The  ministers,  they  said,  had 
departed  from  the  order  of  the  Church  of  England ;  they  could 
hardly  have  failed  to  remind  them  that  in  the  formation  of  the  Com 
pany  and  in  the  procuring  of  the  charter  from  the  king,  there  was  no 
open  assertion  —  whatever  secret  purpose  there  may  have  been  —  that 
there  was  to  be  such  departure  ;  much  less  that  those  should  be  pro 
scribed  who  still  held  to  the  rites  and  ordained  form  of  worship  of 
the  Established  Church.  The  logic  of  the  situation  was  on  their  side. 
Those  who  for  conscience'  sake  had  suffered  from  intolerance,  should 
have  too  much  conscience  to  be  intolerant  of  others.  Did  freedom  to 
worship  God  mean  that  those  who  fled  from  a  persecuting  church 
should  straightway  form  themselves  into  a  church  that  persecuted  ? 

The  ministers  answered  as  best  they  could.  They  met  rather  than 
made  accusations,  and  denied  that  they  were  Separatists  or  Anabap 
tists  ;  they  were  Non-conformists  only  because  the  prayer-book  and 
the  ceremonies  were  of  man  and  not  of  God,  and  covered  sinful  cor 
ruption  in  the  Church.  They  had  suffered  much  and  had  fled  from 
persecution ;  and  it  was 
plain  that  thereafter  they 
and  the  Church  could  not 
dwell  together.  That  the 
liberty  they  had  contended 
for  and  gained  was  a  lib 
erty  cherished  for  them 
selves  and  not  for  others 
was  clear  enough.  That 
evidently  was  their  limita- 

J  n  Endicott  8  Sun  Dial  and  other  Colonial  Relics. 

tion ;  the  gain  was  one  too 

precious  to  be  imperilled  by  being  shared.  They  only  remembered 
that  they  had  escaped  from  a  persecuting  church,  and  for  its  visible 
signs  among  them  they  had  no  toleration,  though  those  signs  were 
in  innocent  hands.  The  practical  dealing  with  the  ques- 

1     .         TheBrownes 

tion   they  left  to  Endicott,    who  was  stronger  than  logic,   sent  back  to 

*  1  England. 

He  told  the  Brownes  "  that  New  England    was   no   place 
for  such  as  they,"  1  and  sent  them  back  to  England  with  the  return 
ing  fleet. 

The  first  six  weeks  had  determined  the  policy  and  the  history  of  the 
Massachusetts  Bay  Colony.  "  There  are  lately  arrived  here,"  wrote 
the  Company  to  the  ministers  in  October,  "  being  sent  from  the  gov 
ernor,  Mr.  Endicott,  as  men  factious  and  evil  conditioned,  John  and 
Samuel  Browne,  being  brothers  ;  who,  since  their  arrival  have  raised 
rumors,  (as  we  hear)  of  divers  scandalous  and  intemperate  speeches 

1  Morton's  Memorial. 


524  MASSACHUSETTS   BAY.  [CHAP.  XX. 

passed  from  one  or  both  of  you  in  your  public  sermons  or  prayers  in 
New  England  as  also  of  some  innovations  attempted  by  you."  Ex 
horting  them,  then,  to  clear  themselves,  if  innocent,  of  these  charges, 
or  to  repent  if  otherwise,  as  the  Council  must  "  disallow  any  such  pas 
sages,"  they  add  "  we  are  tender  of  the  least  aspersion,  which  either 
directly  or  obliquely,  may  be  cast  upon  the  state  here."  l  And  in  a 
letter  to  the  governor  they  are  still  more  cautious,  but  explicit.  "  Yet 
for  that  we  do  consider,"  they  write,  "that  you  are  in  a  government 
newly  founded,  and  want  that  assistance  which  the  weight  of  such  a 
business  doth  require,  we  may  have  leave  to  think  that  it  is  possible 
some  undigested  counsels  have  too  suddenly  been  put  in  execution, 
which  may  have  ill  construction  with  the  State  here,  and  make  us  ob 
noxious  to  the  adversary.  Let  it  therefore  seem  good  unto  you  to  be 
very  sparing  in  introducing  any  laws  or  commands  which  may  render 
yourself  or  us  distasteful  to  the  State  here  to  which  (as  we  ought) 
we  must  and  will  have  an  obsequious  eye."  2  It  was  clearly  to  the  sud 
denness  and  rashness  of  the  thing,  and  the  influence  it  might  have 
upon  the  Company's  fortunes,  rather  than  to  the  thing  itself,  that  the 
Council  in  London  objected.  The  letters  were  signed  by  men, — 
Winthrop  and  others,  —  who  were  later  the  leading  men  in  Massa 
chusetts.  It  was  not  the  last  time  they  and  the  impetuous  Endicott 
disagreed.  With  him,  if  anything  was  to  be  done  it  was  well  to  do 
it  quickly. 

Of  the  Brownes  we  hear  little  more.  Their  case  was  referred  to  a 
committee,  —  and  slept  there.  "  Though  they  breathed  out  threaten- 
ings,"  says  Morton,  "  both  against  the  Governor  and  the  ministers 
there,  yet  the  Lord  so  disposed  of  all  that  there  was  no  further  incon 
venience  followed  upon  it."  They  had  played  their  part  in  fixing  the 
character  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Colony.  There  was  no  remedy 
for  the  proceedings  of  Endicott  and  the  ministers. 

There  could  have  been  no  backward  step,  even  had  there  been  the 
disposition  ;  but  there  was  none.  Cautious  as  the  Company  were  not 
to  offend  the  state,  they  had  a  definite  aim  and  purpose,  and  the  ex 
pulsion  of  the  Brownes  was  directly  in  the  line  of  it.  They  meant 
that  the  control  of  the  colony  should  be  transferred  from  England  to 
America  ;  that  it  should  be  governed,  not  by  a  council  in  London, 
under  the  watchful  and  jealous  eyes  of  the  church  and  the  court,  but 
by  its  own  members,  within  its  own  house.  In  the  same  month  that 
Endicott  and  the  ministers  were  gathering  the  people  together  under 
a  new  confession  of  faith  and  covenant,  into  a  visible  Reformed  Con- 

1  The  Company's  Letter  to  the  Ministers.     Young's  Chronicles  of  Massachusetts,  p.  287 
et  seq. 

2  The  Company's  letter  to  Gov.  Endicott,  in  Young,  pp.  290,  291. 


1630.] 


TRANSFER   OF   THE   GOVERNMENT, 


525 


Seal    of  Massachusetts   Bay  Com 
pany. 


gregation,  Mr.  Cradock  submitted  to  the  London  Council  a  proposi 
tion  for  this  transfer  of  government.     It  would  be,  it  was   ,, 

i  ne  govern- 

said,  for  the  advantage  of  the  colony,  and  an  inducement  to  ^d  tolL 

persons  of  worth  and  position  to  transport  themselves  and  colony- 

their  families  thither.1     When  first  proposed  in  July,  the  members 

were  asked  to  consider  the  matter  privately,  —  "to  carry  this  business 

secretly,  that  the  same  be  not  divulged,"  — 

lest  the  design  should  be  interfered  with.     It 

was  a  serious  question  whether,  under   the 

patent,  any  such  removal  of  the  control  of 

the  Company  would  be  legal ;  but  there  was 

no  question  at  all  that  a  precarious  asylum 

only  was  opened  to  those  who  aimed  to  escape 

the  growing  despotism  at  home,  unless  that 

asylum  could  be  relieved  in  some  degree  from 

the  fear  of  interference. 

The  subject  was  carefully  considered  ;  emi 
nent  lawyers  were  consulted  upon  the  legality 
of  such  a  step,  who  pronounced  in  its  favor ; 
and  in  the  course  of  a  few  weeks  it  was  de 
cided  by  general  consent  that  the  change  be  made.  A  partial  con 
trol  in  regard  to  trade  was  to  remain  with  the  Council  in  London, 
but  the  exclusive  government  of  persons  was  to  go  with  those  who 
should  be  in  authority  in  the  colony  itself. 

That  a  company  should  thus  voluntarily  strip  itself  of  power  has 
sometimes  been  considered  as  difficult  of  explanation  ;  but  there  is 
nothing  remarkable  about  it  if  the  fact  was  that  they  only  possessed 
themselves  of  that  power  to  make  precisely  this  disposition  of  it. 
The  men  engaged  in  this  enterprise  were  men  who  had  a  common 
sympathy  in  their  way  of  thinking  upon  politics  and  religion,  and 
some  of  them  also  certain  personal  relations.  It  was  natural,  in  the 
circumstances  of  the  times,  that  they  should  be  drawn  together  by  a 
common  purpose,  to  secure  somewhere  an  asylum  for  those  who  could 
no  longer  submit  to  the  oppression  to  which  they  were  subjected  both 
in  church  and  state,  which  was  rapidly  growing  intolerable.  To  ob 
tain  a  patent  for  lands  in  America  on  any  such  plea  would,  of  course, 
have  been  impossible  ;  but  to  procure  such  a  grant  from  the  king  on 
the  usual  plea,  of  planting  colonies  and  opening  new  sources  of  trade, 
was  neither  a  suspicious  nor  a  difficult  thing  to  do.  Within  five 
months,  however,  of  the  time  of  securing  the  patent,  the  real  object 
seems  to  make  itself  manifest.  The  proposition  is  presented  to  the 

1  See  Records  of  the  Governor  and  Company  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay,  in  Young's 

Chronicles. 


526  MASSACHUSETTS  BAY.  [CHAP.  XX. 

Council  to  put  the  essential  government  of  the  colony  in  the  hands  of 
the  colonists,  but  with  the  exhortation  to  its  members  to  keep  the 
matter  quiet.  When  the  action  of  Endicott  and  the  ministers  in  re 
gard  to  the  Brownes  was  known  in  London,  those  zealous  persons 
were  rebuked,  not  for  the  formation  of  a  reformed  church,  nor  for  the 
expulsion  of  those  who  were  obnoxious  to  the  new  establishment,  but 
for  want  of  prudence  lest  the  state  should  be  alarmed  and  offended. 

Meanwhile  the  plans  of  the  Council  were  pushed  to  a  conclusion, 
and  in  October  the  necessary  change  was  made  in  the  board  of  offi 
cers  which  invested  the  government  of  the  colony  in  its  resident  mem 
bers.  That  the  precedent  thus  established  was  in  after  years  followed 
even  with  the  royal  sanction,  and  without  raising  the  doubts  which 
had  troubled  the  Council  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  is  no  evidence  that 
their  apprehensions  then  of  being  interfered  with  were  not  well 
founded.  Happily  they  were  permitted  to  carry  out  their  plan  with 
out  molestation,  and  they  planted  the  seed  of  a  vigorous  republic 
instead  of  a  feeble  and  dependent  commercial  colony. 

A  reorganization  of  the  court  was  required  by  the  change  now  re 
solved  upon,  and  accordingly  a  new  governor,  and  some  new 
thropmade  councillors  were  elected.  This  governor  w7as  John  Winthrop. 
It  is  noteworthy  that  two  days  after  Cradock  had  made  his 
proposition  to  the  Council  in  August,  a  meeting  of  twelve  gentlemen 
was  held  at  Cambridge,  all  of  whom  pledged  themselves  to  the  prose 
cution  of  this  work  of  a  plantation  in  New  England,  and  to  go  thither 
with  their  families,  within  six  months,  provided  that  before  another 
month  had  passed,  "  the  whole  government,  together  with  the  patent 
for  the  said  plantation,  be  first,  by  an  order  of  court,  legally  trans 
ferred  and  established  to  remain  with  us  and  others  which  shall  in 
habit  upon  the  said  plantation."  Six  of  the  men  who  signed  this 
agreement  already  belonged  to  the  Council,  and  were  re-chosen  upon 
the  new  board  ;  and  as  the  pledge  at  Cambridge  and  the  proposition 
at  London  were  made  within  two  days  of  each  other,  there  was,  with 
out  doubt,  a  common  understanding  in  Conference  and  Council.  An 
accession  was  gained  of  material  strength,  for  some  of  the  new  men 
were  men  of  wealth  and  position ;  the  moral  gain  was  still  greater, 
for  all  of  them  were  of  that  class  whose  discontent  with  the  condition 
of  affairs  in  England  was  so  great  that  they  preferred  exile  to  submis 
sion. 

John  Winthrop,  now  in  his  forty-third  year,  was  a  man  of  good 
social  position,  by  profession  a  lawyer,  as  his  father  and  grandfather 
had  been  before  him,  with  a  yearly  income  of  £100,  which  in  the 
money  value  of  our  time  would  be  about  $18,000.  It  was  a  hard 
thing,  no  doubt,  for  a  man  of  his  gentle  culture  to  dispose  of  his 


1630.] 


JOHN   WINTHROP. 


527 


estate,  to  sacrifice  all  the  associations  clinging  to  an  English  home  of 
several  generations,  and  to  accept  in  exchange  the  rough  hardships 
of  pioneer  life  in  the  wilderness.  At  a  farewell  dinner  which  his 
friends  gave  him  on  the  eve 
of  his  departure,  he  essayed 
to  speak,  but  a  sudden  access 
of  tenderness  broke  down  his 
self-control,  and  tears  were  the 
last  tribute  he  paid  to  his 
country.  Not  that  the  fibre 
of  his  character  lacked  firm 
ness,  but  underneath  a  stern 
devotion  to  his  sense  of  duty 
was  the  tenderness  of  a  wo 
man.  In  his  last  letter  to  his 
wife  he  reminded  her  of  every 
recurring  Monday  and  Friday, 
for  at  a  fixed  hour  on  those  ^ — -pf 

days    they    had    engaged    to V/^  ! 

commune    with    heaven,    and  5 

with  each   other  in  spirit,  in 
mutual  prayer. 

The  winter  of  1629-30  was  spent  in  active  preparation.  On  the 
30th  of  March,  four  ships  of  a  fleet  of  eleven  were  at  Yarmouth 
waiting  for  a  wind.  The  admiral  ship  of  the  fleet  was  the  Arbella,1 
on  board  which  was  Winthrop.  Here  he  and  some  of  his  asso 
ciates  drew  up  a  farewell  address,  which  they  called  "  The 
Humble  Request  of  His  Majesty's  Loyal  Subjects,  the  Gov 
ernor  and  the  Company  late  gone  to  New  England  ;  to 
the  Rest  of  the  Brethren  in  and  of  the  Church  of  England."  "  We 
beseech  you,"  said  the  address,  "  by  the  mercies  of  the  Lord  Jesus, 
to  consider  us  as  your  brethren,  standing  in  very  great  need  of 
your  help  [that  is,  their  prayers  and  blessings],  and  earnestly  im 
ploring  it."  They  esteemed  it,  they  said,  "  our  honor  to  call  the 
Church  of  England,  from  whence  we  rise,  our  dear  mother  ;  and  can- 

1  The  ship's  name  was  the  Eagle,  but  was  changed  to  Arbella,  in  compliment  to  Lady  Ar 
bella  Johnson,  a  daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Lincoln,  and  the  wife  of  Isaac  Johnson,  one  of  the 
Council.  Both  he  and  his  wife  were  on  board  the  vessel.  The  Lady  Arbella  died  a  few 
weeks  after  their  arrival  at  Salem,  and  her  husband  soon  after  followed  her.  Mather,  in 

the  Magnolia,  says  :  — 

" He  try 'd 

To  live  without  her,  lik'd  it  not,  and  dy'd." 

The  lines  have  since  been  a  favorite  epitaph  in  New  England  burial-grounds,  altered  to 
suit  circumstances,  in  the  case  of  bereaved  husbands  or  wives,  where  one  has  not  long  sur 
vived  the  death  of  the  other. 


fareweiiad- 


528  MASSACHUSETTS  BAY.  [CHAP.  XX. 

not  part  from  our  native  country,  where  she  specially  resideth,  without 
much  sadness  of  heart  and  many  tears  in  our  eyes,  ever  acknowledg 
ing  that  such  hope  and  part  as  we  have  obtained  in  the  common  sal 
vation,  we  have  received  in  her  bosom  and  sucked  it  from  her  breasts. 
We  leave  it  not  therefore  as  loathing  that  milk  wherewith  we  were 
nourished  there,  but  blessing  God  for  the  parentage  and  education  as 
members  of  the  same  body,  shall  always  rejoice  in  her  good,  and  un- 
feignedly  grieve  for  any  sorrow  that  shall  ever  betide  her,  and  while 
we  have  breath  sincerely  desire  and  endeavour  the  continuance  and 
abundance  of  her  welfare,  with  the  enlargement  of  her  bounds  in  the 
kingdom  of  Christ  Jesus."  They  entreated  that  they  should  not  be 
forgotten  in  the  prayers  of  ministers  and  of  brethren,  even  of  those 
who  through  want  of  intelligence  of  their  course  could  not  so  well  con 
ceive  of  their  way  as  they  could  desire.  And  they  deprecated  any 
want  of  charity  toward  them  from  any  false  report  of  their  intentions, 
or  from  the  disaffection  or  indiscretion  of  some  who  were  of  them,  or 
rather  among  them  ; 1  —  an  allusion,  perhaps,  to  the  gathering  of  the 
Church,  the  year  before,  at  Salem,  and  the  summary  proceedings  of 
Endicott  in  the  case  of  the  Brownes. 

No  doubt  they  were  sincere  in  these  protestations  of  their  love 
to  the  mother  church,  of  their  tender  memory  of  her  as  she  once  was, 
of  their  devotion  to  her  as  they  thought  she  ought  to  be  ;  but  they  were 
not  quite  frank,  if  in  the  allusion  to  "  disaffection  or  indiscretion  of 
some  of  us,  or  rather  among  us,"  they  referred  to  the*  church  at  Salem, 
whose  example  they  were  about  to  follow  in  complete  unconformity  to 
the  Episcopal  ceremonial. 

Equally  sincere  was  Higginson  when,  hardly  a  year  before,  as  the 
shores  of  England  grew  dim  and  shadowy  upon  the  horizon, 
o*  he  called  his  children  and  other  passengers  to  the  stern  of 
the  ship  to  take  their  last  look  of  the  land  of  their  birth, 
and  exclaimed :  "  We  will  not  say  as  the  Separatists  were  wont  to 
say  at  their  leaving  of  England,  '  Farewell,  Babylon !  Farewell, 
Rome  !  '  but  we  will  say,  Farewell,  dear  England  !  Farewell  the 
Church  of  God  in  England,  and  all  Christian  friends  there  !  We  do 
not  go  to  New  England  as  Separatists  from  the  Church  of  England ; 
though  we  cannot  but  separate  from  the  corruptions  in  it,  but  we 
go  to  practise  the  positive  part  of  church  reformation  and  propagate 
the  gospel  in  America."  2  Yet  hardly  had  they  a  roof  over  their  heads 
in  Salem  ere  it  was  made  a  penal  offence  to  read  the  Episcopal  ser 
vice  in  public.  Every  league  of  the  Atlantic  gave  vigor  and  courage 

1  Mather's  Magnolia,  Young's  Chronicles  of  Massachusetts,  where  "  The  Request,"  is 
given  in  full. 

2  Mather's  Magnolia,  vol.  i.,  p.  362. 


1630.]  ARRIVAL    OF  WINTHROP   AND   HIS   PEOPLE.  529 

to  his  spiritual  mind  as  to  his  material  body.  He  soon  cast  off  the 
habits,  the  indulgences,  and  the  garments  of  an  invalid,  and  with 
equal  readiness  dropped  his  timid  non-conformity  and  his  weak  pro 
testations,  and  put  on  a  frank  and  manly  separatism.  "  A  sip  of  New 
England's  air,"  he  said,  "  is  better  than  a  whole  draught  of  Old  Eng 
land's  ale."  The  new  atmosphere  was  as  good  for  him  in  church 
matters  as  in  everything  else. 

Nor  was  it  otherwise  with  Winthrop  and  his  people.  Within  one 
or  two  years'  time,  writes  Mather,  there  were  seven  churches  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Boston,  all  of  them  "  golden  candlesticks ;  "  all  of 
them  mindful  of  what  "  the  spirit  in  the  Scripture  said  unto  them  ;  " 
thoroughly  weaned  from,  if  not  loathing  the  "  breasts  "  of  that  "  dear 
mother,"  the  English  Church  ;  caring  little  now  for  that  nice  distinc 
tion  between  the  Church  invisible  and  pure,  and  the  Church  visible 
and  corrupt. 

The  Arbella  arrived  at  Salem  on  the  12th  of  June,  1630.     The  con 
dition  of  things  was  not  encouraging.     During  the  winter  Arrivalof 
just  passed  eighty  people  had  died,  which  must  have  been  j^^er 
nearly  a  fourth  of  the  whole  number.    Their  provisions  were  ^1°e1i2°P' 
nearly  exhausted,  and  but  for  this  reinforcement,  still  greater  1630)  0-  S- 
suffering  would  inevitably  have  followed.    It  seemed  impossible  for 
any  of  the  early  colonies  to  escape  these  initiative  disasters,  notwith 
standing  the  precautions  which  experience  taught  them.     No  better 
fortune  was  to  attend  these  new-comers.    In  the  course  of  the  summer 
seventeen  ships  arrived  — among  them  the  faithful  Mayflowei bring 
ing  altogether  about  a  thousand  persons.     Some  of  them  had  made 
long  passages,  and  the  scurvy  broke  out  among  the  passengers.    Much 
sickness  prevailed  in  all  the  settlements  during  the  following  year, 
due  more  probably  to  want  of  proper  shelter  than  any  other  cause. 

These  settlements  were  to  be  made  at  different  places,  but  Charles- 
town  was  a  sort  of  starting-point  for  most  of  them,  that  being  the  one 
plantation  belonging  to  the  company  inside  of  the  Bay.  This 

J  J  Settlement 

beginning  was  made  there  a  year  or  two  before  by  three  of^charies- 
brothers  named  Sprague,  who  went  from  Salem.  One  of  the 
immediate  duties  urged  upon  Endicott,  after  the  Company  obtained 
its  charter,  was  the  speedy  occupation  of  some  point  within  the  bay 
between  Nahant  and  Point  Alderton.  The  patent  which  Captain 
Robert  Gorges  had  received  from  the  Plymouth  Company  had  de 
scended  to  his  brother  John,  and  he  had  sold  to  a  Sir  William  Brere- 
ton  and  John  Oldham  —  the  acquaintance  of  the  latter  we  have  al 
ready  made  at  Plymouth  —  all  the  country  from  Charles  River  to 
Nahant  and  twenty  miles  inland.  The  grant  made  by  the  Plymouth 
Company  to  the  Massachusetts  Company,  and  the  royal  patent  to  the 


530 


MASSACHUSETTS   BAY. 


[CHAP.  XX. 


Massachusetts  Bay  Company,  included  all  this  region.  Neither  Brere- 
ton  nor  Oldham  were  disposed  to  yield  their  claims,  and  had  failed  to 
come  to  any  agreement  with  the  Council  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay 
Company,  in  regard  to  them.  The  question  was  a  frequent  subject  at 
the  meetings  of  the  Council  in  London,  and  Cradock  —  who  spoke  of 
Oldham  as  a  man  obstinate  and  violent  in  his  opinions  —  wrote  to  Endi- 
cott  to  send  "forty  or  fifty  persons  to  Massachusetts  Bay  to  inhabit 
there  ....  with  all  speed  ....  whereby  the  better  to  strengthen  our 
possession  there  against  all  or  any  that  shall  intrude  upon  us.''  This 


Colonial    Furniture. 


was  aimed  at  the  rival  claimants,  Brereton  and  Oldham,  whose  title 
the  Company  believed,  would  not  hold  good  in  law  against  their  own, 
but  was  coupled  with  a  caution  not  to  molest  such  other  Englishmen 
as  had  there  planted,  and  who  were  willing  to  live  under  the  govern 
ment  of  the  new  Company. 

Some  of  these  we  have  spoken  of  in  a  previous  chapter — Maver 
ick,  on  Noddle's   Island,  now  East   Boston  ;  Thompson,  on  Thomp- 


1621.]  EARLY   SETTLERS   ABOUT   BOSTON   BAY.  531 

son's  Island  ;  Blaxton,  or  Blackstone,  living  at  this  time  near  the  foot 
of  what  is  now  Boston  Common,  but  who  removed  some  years 

,    ,  ,,        ,         ,          .    ,,  ,  ,        i  •  Old  settlers 

later  to  tne  banks  01  the  river  since  known  by  his  name  —  on  Boston 

Bay 

the  Blackstone  —  in  the  southwestern  part  of  the  State  of 
Massachusetts.  There  was  one  man,  also,  Thomas  Walford,  a  black 
smith,  living  at  Charlestown,  then  called  Mishawan,  by  the  Indians, 
meaning  Great  Spring.  Thither,  where  the  Spragues  had  gone  be 
fore,  about  a  hundred  of  those  who  came  with  Higginson  in  1629, 
went  in  obedience  to  the  injunction  of  the  company  to  strengthen  their 
possession.  There  on  the  17th  of  June  stood  John  Winthrop,  the 
first  governor  of  Massachusetts,  on  the  hill  that  on  another  17th  of 
June,  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  later,  was  to  be  made  more  memor 
able. 


Colonial   Relics. 


One  of  the  first  of  the  fleet  to  arrive  was  the  Mary  $  John,  whose 
captain,  either  misunderstanding  his  instructions,  or  over-anxious  to 
return,  landed  his  one  hundred  and  forty  passengers  at  Nantasket. 
Among  these  were  John  Wareham,  and  John  Maverick,  clergymen  ; 
Roger  Ludlow,  and  Edward  Rossiter,  men  of  substance  and  posi 
tion.  As  they  could  not  remain  where  they  had  been  landed,  against 
their  will,  several  of  their  number,  with  an  old  planter  for  interpreter, 
took  a  boat,  and  loading  it  with  goods  went  in  search  of  a  place  that 
should  better  answer  their  purpose.  They  touched  first  at  Charles- 
town,  and  were  there  advised  to  proceed  up  the  river.  This  they  did 
till  the  water  shoaled  near  the  place  where  the  United  States  Arsenal 
at  Watertown  now  stands.  A  number  of  Indians  in  the  neigh 
borhood  alarmed  this  little  band,  but  when  the  old  planter  requested 
them  not  to  approach  the  camp  that  night,  they  considerately  ab 
stained.  On  the  next  day  they  sent  one  of  their  number  with  a  bass, 
as  token  of  amity  and  welcome.  The  English  sent  a  man  with  a  bis 
cuit,  and  in  this  economical  fashion  the  intercourse  began.  The  In- 


532  MASSACHUSETTS   BAY.  [CHAP.  XX. 

dians  "  supplied  us  with  bass,  exchanging  a  bass  for  a  bisket-cake,  and 
were  very  friendly  unto  us."  These  fish  no  longer  run  in  that  river, 
but  the  Charles  was  then  a  natural  fish- way  as  far  up  as  the  first 
rapids,  near  which  the  Indians  had  erected  a  basket-weir. 

Here  the  explorers  remained  but  a  few  days,  for  hearing  that  there 

was  at  Mattapan  a  neck  of  land  with  good  pasturage,  where  they 

might  fence  in  their  cattle,  the  whole  company  were  taken 

Settlement  °  L        £ 

atDorches-  to  that  place.  1  hey  gave  to  it  the  name  or  Dorchester, 
perhaps  in  honor  of  the  Rev.  John  White,  of  Dorchester, 
England,  who  seems  to  have  had  a  special  interest  in  this  company. 
They  had  held  a  day  of  fasting  at  Plymouth  before  sailing,  and  Mr. 
White  was  there  with  them,  advising,  sympathising,  and  preaching. 
They  suffered  many  privations  through  the  first  winter  at  Dorchester, 
eking  out  their  scanty  stores  with  corn  bought  from  the  Indians, 
subsisting  sometimes  upon  shell-fish,  which  even  the  women  went  out 
to  dig  upon  the  mud-flats  off  the  neck.1 

The  Mary  and  John  arrived  in  May.  From  that  time  to  October 
the  ships  were  dropping  in,  one  after  another,  through  the  summer, 
their  passengers  scattering  about  Boston  Bay  at  various  points.  Some 
went  up  the  Mystic  ;  some  up  the  Charles  ;  beginnings  of  towns  were 
made  at  Medford,  Watertown,  Cambridge,  Roxbury,  Lynn,  and  else-* 
where,  and  the  "  golden  candlesticks  "  were  gradually  lighted.  Some 
other  towns  moved  within  a  few  weeks  from  Charlestown  to  Shawmut 
Point,  the  first  party  being  one  of  young  people  —  a  ship's 
boat-load  —  who  landed  about  where  the  Charlestown  bridge  now 
crosses  the  river.  Boston  was  actually  begun  in  a  frolic.  Anne  Pol 
lard,  a  lively  young  girl,  was  the  first  person,  amid  some  pleasant  con 
tention,  to  spring  ashore  —  the  first  white  woman  who  ever  stepped 
upon  that  spot.2 

Shawmut  was  first  called  Trimountain,  not  because  of  the  three 
highest  hills  that  overtopped  the  peninsula,  but  because  of  three  emi 
nences  that  then  crowned  one  of  them,  Beacon  Hill,  where  the  State 
House  now  stands. 

The  water  at  Charlestown,  in  spite  of  its  name  —  Mishawan, 
Great  Spring  —  seems  not  to  have  been  good,  and  Blackstone  in- 
gettiement  vited  Winthrop  and  his  people  to  pitch  their  tents  by 
ton-  his  fountain  of  sweet  waters,  which  weHed  up  somewhere 
at  the  bottom  of  the  present  Common.3  The  settlement  was  fairly 
begun  before  the  first  of  September,  and  on  the  7th  of  that  month 

1  Memoir  of  Robert  Clap.     Young's  Chronicles,  chap,  xviii.     The  place  was  called  Dor 
chester  Neck,  till  early  in  the  present  century,  when  it  was  annexed  to  Boston,  and  has  ever 
since  been  called  South  Boston. 

2  Old  Landmarks  of  Boston,  by  S.  G.  Drake. 

3  Ibid. 


1631.] 


ROGER   WILLIAMS. 


533 


Old   Houses,    Boston,    England. 


it  was  ordered  at  a  court  held  at  Charlestown,  that  the  place  should 
be  called  Boston,  from  the  old  home  of  many  of  these  people  in 
Lincolnshire,  England. 

Blackstone  claimed  to  own  the  whole  peninsula,  as  he  was  the  first 
white  man  who  had  ever  occupied  it.  But  title  of  occupation  was  held 
not  to  be  good  against  title  by  grant  from  the  king  of  England.  The 
Company,  however,  was  not 
disposed  to  deal  ungenerously 
with  him,  and  before  he  pushed 
out  again  into  the  wilderness, 
annoyed  by  too  crowded  a  pop 
ulation,  they  allowed  him  about 
one  sixth  of  the  territory,  and 
afterward  bought  it  of  him  for 
thirty  pounds.  Blackstone  was 
an  Episcopalian  in  faith,  as  well 
as  a  man  "  of  a  particular  hu 
mor."  He  would  not  accept 
fellowship  in  the  church  of  the 
Puritans,  frankly  saying  :  "  I  came  from  England  because  I  did  not 
like  the  lord-bishops  ;  but  I  can't  join  with  you,  because  I  would  not 
be  under  the  lord-brethren."  1  Walford,  the  blacksmith,  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Charles,  was  swept  away  in  a  more  summar}^  fashion  by 
the  advancing  wave  of  civilization.  In  less  than  a  year,  it  is  recorded 
that  he  was  fined  by  the  court,  and  banished  with  his  wife  beyond 
the  limits  of  the  patent.2  He  was  too  free  in  his  talk. 

In  February,  1631,  was  a  notable  arrival.     Sickness  and  want  were 
at  that  time  universal ;  even  the  governor's  stores  were  almost  ex 
hausted  ;    others  of  smaller  means  were  on  the  scantiest  allowance, 
and  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer  —  the  fasting  an  easy  duty  —  was 
proclaimed.     But  before  the  day  arrived,  the  ship  Lion,  commanded 
by  the  good  Captain  William  Peirce,  who  so  often  appeared  at  pre 
cisely  the  right  moment  both  at  Plymouth  and  Boston,  was  reported 
at  Nantasket.     She  was  deeply  laden  with  provisions,  and  the  day  of 
humiliation  and  supplication  was  changed  to  one  of  thanksgiving  and 
praise,  for  the  people  felt  that,  like  the  children  of  Israel,  they  were 
the  chosen  of  the  Lord,  and  that  he  had  sent  them  succor. 
Possibly  the  fervor  of  the  thanksgiving  would  have  been  Roger  vvii- 
moderated    could   they  have   foreseen   what   else   the   ship 
brought  them  in  the  person  of  Roger  Williams,  who,  with  his  newly 
married  wife,  was  a  passenger  on  board  the  Lion. 

1  Lyford's  Plain  Dealing.     Mather's  Magnolia. 

2  See  Young's  Chronicles,  note,  p.  374,  for  various  authorities. 


534 


MASSACHUSETTS   BAY. 


[CHAP.  XX. 


Winthrop  boarded  the  ship  in  the  lower  harbor,  anxious  about 
the  quality  and  quantity  of  her  cargo,  of  so  much  importance  to 
the  hungry  colonists.  The  interview  between  him  and  Williams 
was  probably  cordial,, although  the  latter,  while  travelling  the  same 
road  as  the  Puritans,  had  travelled  faster  and  further  ;  and  the 

course  he  had  taken  in  his 
short  career  —  he  was  not  much 
over  thirty  —  in  regard  to  the 
Established  Church,  was  a  re 
buke  to  the  cautious  prudence 
shown  by  Winthrop  and  his  as 
sociates  before  they  left  Eng 
land.  It  is  not  likely,  however, 
that  it  occurred  to  the  governor, 
when  they  first  met,  that  here 
in  New  England,  where  both 
were  alike  separated  from  the 
old  order  of  things,  any  differ 
ence  could  divide  them.  Among 
the  passengers  of  the  Lion,  the 
governor  says,  was  Mr.  Wil 
liams,  "  a  godly  minister." 
But  they  were,  nevertheless,  speedily  and  completely  divided  in 
their  public  relations,  if  not  in  their  private  friendship.  Williams 
was  at  first  so  well  received 
in  Boston,  that  he  was  unani 
mously  elected,  according  to  his 
own  statement,  the  teacher  of 
the  church.  But  the  call  was 

Controversy  Defused  because,  he  says,  "  I  durst  not  officiate  to  an 
unseparated  people,  as  upon  examination  and  conference 
I  found  them  to  be."  1  That  a  controversy  arose  between 
him  and  the  church  at  Boston,  and  that  he  refused  to  join  it,  be 
cause  as  Winthrop  says,  "  they  would  not  make  a  public  declaration 
of  their  repentance  for  having  communion  with  the  churches  of  Eng- 

1  A  MS.  letter  of  Williams  to  the  younger  Cotton,  in  possession  of  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society,  and  quoted  by  Palfrey,  vol.  i.,  p.  406,  note,  is  the  authority  for  this 
statement.  The  assertion  of  the  writer  that  he  was  elected  teacher  of  the  Boston  church 
is  a  sufficient  and  clear  explanation  of  how  the  position  of  that  church  —  hitherto  unex 
plained —  came  to  be  a  subject  of  controversy  between  it  and  Williams.  As  Dr.  Palfrey 
says,  it  is  hard  to  suppose  that  Williams's  memory  had  failed  him  when  he  wrote  the  let 
ter,  and  extraordinary  that  the  fact  is  not  mentioned  in  any  record  of  the  time.  But  as  the 
fact  of  the  controversy  is  given  without  any  clue  as  to  how  it  arose,  and  as  Williams's  state 
ment  supplies  a  rational  origin  for  that  controversy,  the  positive  evidence  of  his  correctness 
is  greater  than  the  negative  evidence  of  his  being  mistaken. 


[Signature  of  Roger  Williams  ] 


with  the 
church  of 
Boston. 


1631.] 


WILLIAMS  AT   SALEM  AND   PLYMOUTH. 


535 


laud,"  1  is  noticed  by  contemporary  writers.  But  this  was  not  the 
only  offence  of  the  recusant  minister.  He  declared  that  the  civil 
magistrate  had  no  right  to  punish  a  breach  of  the  Sabbath,  or  any 
offence  that  was  a  breach  of  the  first  four  commandments  of  the  deca 
logue.  The  difficulty  was  insuperable.  The  church  in  Boston  was 
clearly  no  place  for  a  man  avowing  such  doctrines,  whether  as  teacher 
or  member.  In  a  few  weeks  he  removed  to  Salem. 

Whether  it  was  the  church  in  Boston  that  refused  to  accept  Mr. 
Williams,  or  Mr.  Williams  who  refused  to  accept  the  church, 

'     Williams 

the  State  now  stepped  in  to  bring  the  young  clergyman  settled  at 
into  due  subjection.  The  Salem  church  called  him  as  its 
teacher,  Mr.  Higginson  having  died  about  six  months  before.  When 
Winthrop  heard  of  this, 
the  subject  was  brought 
up  in  a  court  held  at 
Boston,  and  Endicott  was 
written  to,  that "  they  mar 
velled  they  [at  Salem] 
would  choose  him  with 
out  advising  with  the  coun 
cil,"  and  requesting  that 
the  church  should  proceed 
no  further  till  there  had 
been  some  conference.2 
The  church  paid  no  heed 
to  this  admonition,  and 
Williams  was  settled  as 
the  minister.  It  was  only 
for  a  few  months,  how 
ever  ;  the  council  gave  no 

peace  to  the  church  till  the  offender  was  driven  out  from  among  them 
to  find  a  refuge  at  Plymouth,  where,  as  the  assistant  of  the  Removal  to 
Rev.  Mr.  Smith,  he  remained  for  the  next  two  years. 

He  was  now  where  the  council  of  Massachusetts  Bay  could  not 
reach  him,  and  among  a  people  to  many  of  whom  his  doctrines  and 
ministrations  were  acceptable.  Independent  as  he  was  as  a  thinker, 
and  fearless  in  avowing  his  convictions  when  occasion  called  for  it,  he 
does  not  seem  to  have  entered  upon  his  career  in  New  England  by 
thrusting  forward  either  them  or  himself  offensively.  The  worst  doc 
trine  he  was  accused  of  promulgating  while  at  Plymouth  was  that  the 
country  on  which  the  English  had  intruded  belonged  to  those  they 
found  there,  and  that  the  pretended  title  of  James  I.  was  mere  usur- 

i  Savage's  Winthrop,  vol.  i.,  p.  53.  2  Savage's   Winthrop. 


First  Church  in   Salem. 


536  MASSACHUSETTS   BAY.  [CHAP.  XX. 

pation.  Some  novelties  of  doctrine  seem,  at  last,  to  have  shocked  the 
good  elder  Brewster,  but  Bradford  speaks  of  him  in  terms  of  high 
commendation.  But,  for  a  time,  his  ministrations  were  entirely  with 
out  offence.  Winthrop  and  Mr.  Wilson,  the  Boston  minister,  were  at 
Plymouth  in  the  course  of  the  next  year — walking  thither  from 
Weymouth  —  partook  of  the  sacrament  on  the  Lord's  day  with  Mr. 
Williams,  and  afterward  discussed  some  question  propounded  by  him, 
according  to  the  custom  of  that  church  ;  —  an  amicable  and  godly  dis 
cussion,  apparently,  Mr.  Williams  refraining  from  using  the  opportu 
nity  to  advance  any  of  his  heretical  views,  either  civil  or  religious. 
For  a  while,  evidently,  he  ceased  to  be  a  troubler  in  Israel. 

Meanwhile  no  time  was  lost  in  bringing  the  settlers  in  their  several 
Enforce-  communities  under  the  regulation  of  both  civil  and  ecclesi- 
mentofiaw.  as^cai  polity.  Meetings  of  the  court  were  frequent,  and 
stringent  laws  were  passed  and  applied  with  rigor.  Thus,  one  man 
was  fined  ten  pounds,  in  September,  for  selling  a  gun  to  an  Indian,  and 
it  was  decreed  that  not  even  corn  should  be  sold  to  the  natives  without 
leave.  Sir  Richard  Saltonstall,  an  assistant,  and  a  man  of  mark,  was 
fined  for  whipping  two  persons  when  no  other  assistant  was  present, 
as  the  law  prescribed  in  such  cases.  An  irreverent  sportsman  was 
whipped  for  fowling  on  Sunday  ;  a  hungry  one  for  stealing  a  loaf  of 
bread.  The  first  quack  in  the  colony  was  fined  five  pounds  for  pretend 
ing  to  cure  the  scurvy  with  a  worthless  water,  for  which  he  charged  an 
exorbitant  price,  and  he  was  warned  against  any  such  practice  in 
future.1  This  austere  virtue  is  now  lost,  even  in  Massachusetts. 
Malicious  reflections  upon  the  government  and  the  church  at  Salem 
cost  an  offender  his  ears.  The  man  who  got  drunk  was  held  to  be  dis 
orderly  and  fined  for  a  breach  of  the  peace.  Adultery  was  punished 
with  death.  There  was  no  lack  of  watchfulness  over  the  morals  and 
the  manners,  as  well  as  the  safety  of  the  colonists.  Even  the  ex-gov 
ernor,  Endicott,  was  fined  forty  shillings  in  a  case  of  assault  and  bat 
tery  on  one  goodman  Dexter.  In  a  letter  to  Winthrop  he  acknowl 
edged  that  he  was  wrong  in  such  violence,  as  unbecoming  in  a  justice 
of  the  peace.  But  in  reply  to  Dexter's  threat  that,  if  he  could  not 
get  justice  he  would  "try  it  out  at  blows,"  Endicott  said,  that  if  that 
were  lawful  and  "  he,  Dexter,  were  a  fit  man  for  me  to  deal  with, 
you  should  not  hear  me  complain  ;  "  then  adding  piously  and  peni 
tently,  though  the  natural  Adam  was  evidently  very  strong  within 
him,  "  I  hope  the  Lord  hath  brought  me  off  from  that  course." 

But  more  important  than  all  other  enactments  was  one  passed  at 
the  first  General  Court  for  elections  in  the  spring  of  1631,  by  which 
it  was  declared  that  no  man  should  be  admitted  to  the  body  politic 

1  Mass.  Col.  Rec.,  cited  in  Palfrey's  History  of  New  England,  vol.  i.,  pp.  321  et  seq. 


1631.]  CITIZENSHIP.  537 

who  was  not  a  member  of  some  church  within  its  limits.  Nothing 
could  so  clearly  show  the  character  of  the  people.  The  test  Condition  ot 
of  citizenship  was  piety  ;  and  the  test  of  piety  was  member-  citizenshiP- 
ship  in  the  Reformed  Church.  No  surer  way  could  have  been  devised 
of  excluding  all  but  Puritans,  and  Puritans  of  a  certain  way  of  think 
ing,  from  any  share  in  the  government  of  the  colony.  But  these  peo 
ple  had  fled  from  ecclesiastical  tyranny  at  home,  and  they  believed 
that  their  only  safety  lay  in  a  close  ecclesiastical  corporation  of  their 
own,  a  body  corporate  in  which  the  adversary  could  gain  no  foothold 
either  in  the  church  or  in  the  state.  Narrow  and  illiberal  as  the  pol 
icy  is,  when  tried  by  the  standard  of  later  times,  it  was  meant  to  be  a 
peaceful  solution  of  the  problem  of  that  age,  the  working  out  of  which 
soon  cost  England  a  revolution  and  the  king  his  head. 

These  men  had  come  into  the  wilderness  to  build  up  a  theocracy, 
and  made  no  pretensions  of  securing  liberty  for  anybody  but  them 
selves.  They  were  quite  as  intolerant  of  opinions  that  were  not  their 
own  as  the  most  inexorable  persecutor  that  ever  "  peppered  "  a  Puri 
tan.  The  question  is  even  not  yet  quite  settled  in  all  minds  whether 
intolerance  is  more  lovely  and  safe  in  the  hands  of  men  who  only 
mean  to  use  it  to  the  glory  of  God,  than  in  the  hands  of  men  who 
plainly  persecute  the  righteous  for  unrighteous  ends.  The  line  where 
disinterested  devotion  fades  into  worldly  motives  and  the  indulgence 
of  the  most  selfish  passions,  is  so  exceedingly  fine  and  so  easily  passed, 
that  they  must  needs  be  much  more  than  common  men  who  can  be 
trusted  with  intolerance  only  as  a  divine  attribute. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

NEW   ENGLAND   COLONIES. 

LAWS,  ECCLESIASTICAL  AND  POLITICAL.  —  JOHN  ELIOT'S  WORK  AMONG  THE  IN 
DIANS. —  JOHN  COTTON  ARRIVES  IN  BOSTON.  —  THE  RED  CROSS  IN  THE  KING'S 
BANNER.  —  PERSECUTION  AND  BANISHMENT  OF  ROGER  WILLIAMS.  —  THE  FIRST 
SETTLEMENT  OF  RHODE  ISLAND.  —  SETTLERS  FROM  PLYMOUTH  ON  THE  CONNECTI 
CUT  RIVER. — JOHN  WINTHROP,  JR.,  FIRST  GOVERNOR  OF  CONNECTICUT.  —  HOOK 
ER'S  EMIGRATION  TO  HARTFORD.  —  ANNE  HIJTCHINSON  AND  HER  DOCTRINES. — 
MURDER  OF  JOHN  OLDHAM.  —  BEGINNING  OF  THE  PEQUOD  WAR. 

THE  accounts  that  went  home  for  the  first  year  or  two  from  Massa 
chusetts  Bay  were  discouraging,  and  for  a  while   more   returned  to 
England  than  joined  the  colony.    Yet  the  progress  was  steady  in  spite 
of  all  discouragements  and  hardships ;  the  settlements  grew 

Gradual  .  .  TIT 

progress  of  into  towns  ;  the  towns  grew  into  a  consolidated  common 
wealth.  Local  affairs  soon  came  to  be  entrusted  to  a  few 
select  men  from  a  community,  though  any  freeman  who  chose  could 
assist  at  their  deliberations.  The  system  —  which  for  convenience' 
sake,  as  numbers  increased,  took  the  place  of  a  meeting  of  all  the 
freemen,  when  any  question  arose,  such  as  the  making  of  roads,  or  the 
division  of  lands  —  begun  in  one  place  soon  extended  to  others,  till 
in  the  course  of  four  or  five  years  town-governments  were  recognized 
as  the  established  order.  The  next  step  was  natural  and  easy  ;  repre 
sentatives  were  sent  to  the  General  Court,  first  to  consult  with  the 
assistants,  and  to  regulate  taxation  ;  next  to  enact  laws,  and  to  take 
part  in  the  general  management  of  the  colony.  Step  by  step  the 
colony  grew  into  a  commonwealth  —  a  government  of  the  people. 

There  was  no  interference  with  them  from  the  home  government. 
Men  of   some    influence  who    had    been    in  the    country  and  left  it, 

voluntarily  or  involuntarily,  from  various  motives,  some- 
ineffectual  J  J ' 

attempt  in     times  good  and  sometimes  bad,  united  to  break  down  the 

England  to 

injure  the      colony.      They  were  so  far  listened   to  that  the  king   and 

colony.  .  .  . 

the  Privy  Council  looked  into  the  matter,  but  found  nothing 
which  was  considered  worthy  of  reprehension.  It  was  considered, 
apparently,  that  there  was  nothing  dangerous  in  Puritanism  when  so 
far  away ;  and  it  is  not  at  all  unlikely  that  Charles  felt  a  generous 
interest  in  the  first  colony  established  under  a  patent  signed  by  his 


1632.]  CLERGYMEN  IN  MASSACHUSETTS.  539 

own  hand,  and  in  a  country  to  which  he  had  given  a  name.  There 
was  controversy  between  them  and  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges  and  others 
about  patents  ;  the  Brownes  did  not  readily  forget  the  first  cause  of 
complaint  they  had  against  Endicott,  and  the  church  at  Salem.  Mor 
ton  remembered  the  prostrate  May-pole  at  Merry  Mount,  and  the 
stocks  in  Boston ,  a  mysterious  Sir  Christopher  Gardiner  —  who 
travelled  about  the  country  among  the  Indians,  having  with  him  a 
pretty  young  woman,  confessedly  not  his  wife,  and  who  was  suspected 
of  being  a  Catholic,  with  sinister  designs  on  the  Western  Hemisphere 
—  railed  at  the  tyranny  of  Winthrop,  who  had  dismissed  him  without 
ceremony  from  Massachusetts  ;  but  all  these  united,  with  any  others 
who  had,  or  thought  they  had  grievances,  availed  nothing  in  England 
to  provoke  interference.  The  colony  was  happily  left  to  its  own 
devices. 

There  the  most  potent  influence  was  the  clergy.  Though  ministers 
were  debarred  from  holding  civil  offices,  they  nevertheless,  Influence0f 
in  large  measure  through  the  church  controlled  the  State.  theclew- 
The  franchise  of  citizenship  could  only  belong  to  the  church-member ; 
but  church- membership  was  under  the  control  of  the  ministers.  This 
ecclesiastical  government  suited  the  Puritans  of  Massachusetts  and 
was  of  their  own  creation  ;  but  the  influence  of  the  bishops  in  Eng 
land,  though  exercised  in  a  different  way,  was  never  more  potent  than 
that  of  the  minister  of  the  parish  in  New  England,  who  continued  for 
a  century  and  a  half  to  be  looked  up  to  by  his  parishioners  with  almost 
as  much  reverence  as  is  rendered  to  the  Pope,  long  after  the  rule  of 
the  bishops  had  ceased  to  exist. 

Not  all  of  them,  however,  cared  for  political  influence,  or  were  most 
devoted   even    to  theological  questions.     Chief  among  those  who  had 
other  aims  was  the  Rev.  John  Eliot  of  Roxbury,  who  was  The  »Apog. 
made  the  pastor  of  its  first  church,  in  1632.     His  life  was  tle"Eliot- 
largely  devoted  to  converting  the  Indians  to  Christianity,  and  to  that 
end  he  studied  their  language  with  great  assiduity.1    Some  years  later, 
when  he  had  mastered  their  difficult  tongue,  he  preached  his  first  ser 
mon  to  a  small  company  of  Indians,  in  a  wigwam  at  Nonantum  near 
Watertown.     The  presence  of  Waban,  an  Indian  chief,  suggested  the 
text,  which  was  from  Ezekiel  xxxvii.  9, 10 :  "  Then  said  he  unto  them, 
Prophesy  unto   the  wind  ;  "  —  Waban,   the   chief's  name,  The  p^^ 
meaning  wind.     The  sermon  was  effectual,  and  Waban  be-  Indlan8- 
came   a  Christian.      A  sect  grew  up,  among  whom  he  was  a  man 

i  Elliot's  Indian  Bible  —  a  few  copies  of  which  are  still  in  existence  and  sell  at  almost 
fabulous  sums,  though  in  a  now  unknown  tongue  —  was  published  in  1663.  The  Psalms 
in  Metre,  the  first  book  published  in  America  — 1640  — was  composed  partly  by  him  and 
partly  by  his  colleague,  Weld,  and  by  Richard  Mather. 


540  NEW   ENGLAND   COLONIES.  [CHAP.  XXI. 

of  influence,  called  the  "  Praying  Indians,"  and  who  became  so  obnox 
ious  to  the  unconverted  savage  that,  at  a  later  period  in  time  of  war, 
it  was  necessary  to  place  them  upon  an  island  in  the  harbor,  for  pro 
tection,  although  their  own  town,  Natick  —  "  the  place  of  hills  "  — 
was  well  fortified.1 

But  Eliot's  heroic  work  was  beset  with  monstrous  difficulties.  The 
Indian's  ethical  condition  was  derived  from  the  exigencies  of  the  wil 
derness,  and  seldom  rose  above  them  into  a  nobler  behavior.  This 
spiritual  condition  was  limited  to  a  vague  reference  to  an  overruling 
Manito,  a  decided  belief  in  Hobomock,  the  Evil  Spirit,  and  an  unfalter 
ing  trust  in  the  medicine-man.  Into  this  structure  of  natural  theology 
he  soon  learned  to  infuse  a  love  of  rivn  so  strong  that  it  confused  his 
perception  of  the  white  man's  religion,  as  it  well  might  do.  When 
the  Bible  and  the  puncheon  came  over  to  him  in  the  same  ship,  the 
remark  of  one  of  their  chiefs  was  not  irrelevant :  "  Let  me  see  that 
your  religion  makes  you  better  than  us  and  then  we  may  try  it."  This 
keen  appreciation  of  the  difference  between  the  Englishman's  preach 
ing  and  his  practice  ;  the  love  of  fighting  which  can  hardly  be  assuaged 
in  the  breast  of  an  Indian :  the  thirst  for  the  new  liquors  ; 

Difficulties 

mEiiofs  the  reluctance  to  form  settled  towns  and  to  labor,  were  for 
midable  obstacles  in  Eliot's  way ;  while  the  lukewarmness  of 
the  colonists,  who  thought  the  converts  were  poor  for  Christians  and 
spoiled  for  Indians,  constantly  dogged  his  manly  and  courageous  steps 
as  he  went  to  and  fro  with  incessant  ministering  of  religious  truths  and 
inculcation  of  the  arts  of  civilization  to  the  people  whose  darkness  he 
so  commiserated. 

There  were  other  clergymen  not  less  identified,  though  in  a  different 

Arrival  of      way»  with  the  infancy  of  the  Commonwealth.     In  1633  large 

Hooker,  and    additions  were  made  to  the  colony,  and  among  them  came 

John  Cotton,  Thomas  Hooker,  and  Samuel  Stone.     Hooker 

and  Stone  went  to  Newtown  as  pastor  and  teacher ;  Cotton  remained 

in  Boston  as  teacher  over  the  church  of  which  Wilson  was  pastor. 

The  Rev.  William    Phillips  of    Watertown   had    already  labored  to 

mould  the  churches  into  that  form  of  Congregationalism  which  after- 

^*     /  ,  wards  prevailed,  but  the  work  was  completed 

sTU mi   Ct/HJfll'/    by  Cotton.     He  had,  it  is  said,  "such  an  in- 

, — '  /       sinuating  and  melting  way  in  his  preaching, 

signature  of  John  Cotton.       that  he  would  usually  carry  his  very  adversary 

captive  after  the  triumphant  chariot  of  his  rhetoric;"  and  such  was 

1  Some  of  the  converts  were  made  magistrates  and  constables  in  the  towns  of  Praying  In 
dians.  Here  is  a  warrant  addressed  to  a  constable  :  "1.  I,  Hidondi.  2.  You,  Peter  Water 
man.  3.  Jeremy  Wicket.  4.  Quick  you  take  him.  5.  Fast  you  hold  him.  6.  Straight 
you  bring  him.  7.  Before  me,  Hidondi.  "  The  New  England  History,  by  Charles  W.  Elliot, 
vol.  i.,  p.  326. 


1633.] 


ROGER  WILLIAMS. 


541 


his  authority  "  that  whatever  he  delivered  in  the  pulpit  was  soon  put 
into  an  order  of  court,  if  of  a  civil,  or  set  up  as  a  practice  in  the 
church,  if  of  an  ecclesiastical 


St.   Botolph's  Church,  Boston,    Eng. 


an 

concernment." 1  He  was  an 
able  and  a  learned  man,  already 
distinguished  before  coming  to 
New  England,  as  rector  of  St. 
Botolph's  church  in  Boston,  Lin 
colnshire,  where  his  non-con 
forming  opinions  were  too 
boldly  and  ably  expressed  to 
escape  the  notice  of  the  au 
thorities.  The  hostile  atten 
tion  of  Laud,  the  archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  was  directed  toward 
him,  and  he  was  suspected  of 
an  intention  to  emigrate  so  soon 
as  an  attempt  should  be  made 
to  deal  with  him  for  non-con 
formity.  He  and  Hooker  were 
closely  watched.  Cotton  lay 
concealed  in  London  for  some 
time,  and  they  only  got  out  of 
the  kingdom  by  the  feint  of  embarking  at  the  Isle  of  Wight  and  going 
on  board  in  the  Downs. 

Within  a  month  of  these  arrivals,  Roger  Williams  returned  from 
Plymouth  to  Salem,  and  returned  not  to  peace  but  to  much   Roger  Wil. 
tribulation.     Some  controversy  had  at  length  arisen  between  J^™*^" 
him  and  the  church  at  Plymouth,  his  views  savoring,  Elder  Salem- 
Brewster  thought,  of  Anabaptism ;  he  falling,  Bradford  said,  "  into 
strange  opinions,  and  from  opinions  to  practice."     Some  were  desirous 
of  retaining  him,  but  he  asked  a  dismission,  and  they  let  him  go  with 
a  warning  to  the  church  at  Salem,  some  of  the  Plymouth  people,  how 
ever,  going  with  him. 

But  the  church  at  Salem  would  heed  no  warning,  and  welcomed  him 
back.  For  months  he  exercised  his  gift  "by  way  of  prophecy,"  —  a 
desultory  preacher  without  special  charge.  But  he  prophesied  so 
much  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  Salem  people,  that  when  Mr.  Skelton 
died  the  next  summer,  Williams  was  called  to  his  place.  He  was,  no 
doubt,  watched  narrowly,  even  before  his  settlement ;  but  for  a  while 
his  utterances  were  so  void  of  offence,  that  the  governor  and  as 
sistants  took  up  for  consideration  the  treatise  he  had  written  while  in 

1  Hubbard's  History,  pp.  175,  182. 


542  NEW   ENGLAND   COLONIES.  [CHAP.  XXI. 

Plymouth  in  relation  to  the  Indian  title  to  the  country.  The  offender 
was  notified  to  appear  at  the  next  General  Court  for  cen- 
beeforethe  sure.1  He  appeared  accordingly,  and  made  due  submission, 
asserting  that  the  treatise  was  written  for  the  private  satis 
faction  of  the  governor  and  others  at  Plymouth,  and  that  there 
would  have  been  an  end  of  it  had  not  Mr.  Winthrop  sent  to  him  for  a 
copy.  The  anxiety  to  find  cause  of  complaint  against  him  must  have 
been  great,  when  a  private  manuscript  written  outside  of  the  jurisdic 
tion  of  Massachusetts,  and  thus  obtained,  could  be  made  the  pretext 
of  an  accusation  against  the  writer.  Indeed  the  governor  and  council 
seem  to  have  become  a  little  ashamed  of  it,  for  they  were  gracious 
enough  subsequently  to  pass  the  matter  over,  after  consultation  with 
Mr.  Wilson  and  Mr.  Cotton,  and  on  consideration  that  the  Indian 
essay  was  obscure  in  meaning,  that  Mr.  Williams  had  disavowed  any- 
evil  intent  in  writing  it,  and  had  taken  the  oath  of  allegiance. 

But  offences  were  sure  to  come.     It  was  impossible  for  Mr.  Wil 
liams  to  keep  quiet ;  equally  impossible,  for  the  Council  to 

The  question  .  "  . 

of  veils  at  let  mm  alone.  As  a  sort  of  preliminary  ot  what  was  to 
come  the  colony  was  presently  in  a  buzz,  for  he  had  per 
suaded  the  women  of  Salem  that  modesty  required  they  should  go 
veiled  in  public.  Here  was  heresy.  Cotton  hastened  to  Salem  to  re 
fute  it,  and  his  "  insinuating  and  melting  way  "  brought  down  every 
veil  in  the  parish  between  the  Sunday  services.  It  was  an  exhaustive 
discourse,  if  we  may  trust  Hubbard's  report  of  it,  and  proved  to  the 
women  of  Salem  that  the  Scriptural  reasons  were  not  applicable  in 
their  case  ;  for  many  were  wives  and  not  virgins  ;  none  were  like 
Tamar  ;  and  none  needed  like  Ruth,  to  hold  up  her  veil  before  Boaz 
for  a  measure  of  barley.  Not  a  woman's  face  was  hidden  on  Sunday 
afternoon  after  this  morning's  discourse.  It  was  a  great  triumph  over 
Roger  Williams,  and  so  pleased  was  Mr.  Cotton  with  his  success,  that 
he  carried  the  subject  into  the  "  Boston  Lecture."  But  here  Endicott 
met  him  in  fierce  debate,  and  so  hot  did  it  grow  that  the  governor  in 
terfered  to  put  an  end  to  it.2 

Williams  had  no  more  devoted  follower  than  Endicott,  whose  zeal 
was  of  the  kind  that  out-runs  discretion.  At  home  and  abroad  he 
was,  for  a  time,  ready  to  uphold  his  pastor  at  any  cost,  and  would,  no 
doubt,  had  not  the  governor  stopped  him,  have  maintained  against 
Cotton,  rather  than  admit  that  there  was  any  defect  in  the  doctrine 

1  Savage's  Winthrop,  vol.  i.,  p.  122. 

2  Such  sermons,  however,  were  not  uncommon.     Eliot  and  Clmuncy,  President  of  Har 
vard  College,  preached  long  and  learned  discourses  on  Wigs.     Life  of  Williams,  Sparks's 
Biography,  vol.  xiv.     All  the  magistrates  in   1649,  signed  a  solemn  protest  against  men 
wearing  long  hair,  and  commended  the  subject  to  the  attention  of  the  ministers.     Hutch- 
inson's  History. 


1634.]  ROGER   WILLIAMS.  543 

in  regard  to  veils,  that  every  woman  in  Boston  was  like  Tamar  and 
should  hide  her  face.  The  Council  of  Massachusetts  were  far  more 
tender  of  him  than  of  the  minister,  though  he  did  not  always  escape 
punishment. 

His  zeal,  and  the  influence  of  his  pastor's  teaching  were  made  man 
ifest  in  an  act  of  more  moment  than  whether  the  women 

ill  T          rru  i   •  e     TTT-iT  p     Endicott 

should  go  uncovered.  Ihe  preaching  or  Williams  was  ot  cuts  out  the 
the  searching  kind  and  the  application  of  his  principles  of 
undefiled  religion,  knew  no  limit.  There  was  in  him  no  fear  of  prin 
cipalities  or  powers ;  for  the  Church  of  England  he  had  only  abhor 
rence  ;  for  those  who  reverenced  her,  rebuke  if  not  denunciation.  He 
looked  everywhere  for  the  signs  of  anti-Christ,  and  at  any  relic  of  su 
perstition  he  pointed  an  unswerving  finger.  In  the  red  cross  of  St. 
George  he  saw  only  a  remnant  of  Popery,  not  an  ensign  of  victory. 
This  fervid  flame  of  pure  spiritual  doctrine  caught  up  Endicott  and  he 
blazed  into  fury.  When  next  the  flag  of  England  fluttered  over  him 
in  the  streets  of  Salem  he  seized  its  folds  and  cut  out  the  cross  in 
which  his  pastor  saw  an  emblem  of  submission  to  Rome.  Some  of  the 
soldiers  refused  to  follow  the  mutilated  colors  ;  the  grave  offence  de 
manded  the  attention  of  the  General  Court ;  he  was  rebuked  for  in 
discretion,  and  dismissed  for  a  time  from  his  seat  as  an  assistant  at 
the  Council.  It  was  only  because  all  were  persuaded  that  the  act  was 
done  out  of  tenderness  of  conscience  and  not  out  of  an  evil  mind  that 
he  was  visited  with  no  heavier  penalty1 ;  and,  besides,  there  were  a 
good  many  people  who  sympathized  with  the  act  itself. 

But  Williams  had  not  long  been  settled,  against  the  expostulations 
if  not  the  direct  order  of  the  Council,  when  the  people  of  Sa-  sai^ag^a 
lem  asked  that  a  tract  of  land  at  Marblehead  be  granted  gJSandis 
them.     The   court   refused.     So   palpable   and  flagrant   an  refused- 
act  of  injustice   stirred  the  church  to  further  resistance  ;  the   other 
churches  where  the  magistrates  were  members,  were  written  to  and 
urged    to  admonish  them  for  this  gross  intolerance   toward  Salem. 
There  was  no  other  way  of  appealing  to  public  opinion,  and  public 
opinion  was  the  only  influence  that  could  be  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  magistrates.     The  appeal  was  useless;   the  clergy  made   no  re 
sponse,  and  of  their  position,  no  doubt  the  magistrates  were  Anappealto 
quite  assured  beforehand.     The  protest  led  to  fresh  penal-  churches 
ties ;  the  Salem  deputies  were  deprived  of  their  seats  in  the  Puni^ed. 
court ;    Endicott,  as  chief  and  of  the  most  importance,  was  imprisoned 
until  a  satisfactory  apology  was  made  for  such  a  spirit  of  insubordi 
nation.     It  was  a  complete  establishment  of  the  civil  authority.    Wil 
liams  asked  his  people  to  separate  from  these  subservient  churches. 

i  Hubbard. 


544  NEW   ENGLAND    COLONIES.  [CHAP.  XXI. 

But  his  own  church  was  already  subdued,  and  the  request  was  refused. 
Salem  and  Endicott  submitted  at  last  to  a  power  inexorable  and  too 
strong  for  them,  and  the  pastor  was  left  helpless  and  at  the  mercy  of 
the  court. 

And  the  court  was  without  mercy,  as  Williams  was  without  any 
spirit  of  compromise.  He  was  summoned  to  Boston  to  answer  for 
his  dangerous  heresies,  and  he  appeared,  well  knowing  that  there  was 
hardly  a  magistrate  or  a  minister  in  the  little  commonwealth  that  had 
not  prejudged  him.  The  accusations  against  him  convey  an 
tions  against  inadequate  notion  of  how  serious  an  offence  his  doctrines  were 

Williams.  ,  i        T-«       •  TT  i  i        -it  ... 

among  the  .run  tans.  He  was  charged  with  maintaining  that 
the  magistrate  should  not  punish  a  breach  of  the  first  four  command 
ments,  except  where  the  result  was  a  breach  of  the  peace  ;  that  he 
should  not  tender  an  oath  to  an  unregenerate  man,  and  that  no  one 
should  pray  with  such  a  person,  though  he  be  one's  nearest  relative  ; 
and  that  thanks  should  not  be  given  either  after  meat  or  after  the  sacra 
ment.1  But  out  of  these  propositions  he  deduced  the  plain  doctrine, 
that  the  magistrate  had  no  right  to  meddle  with  any  man's  conscience 
or  religious  opinions,  and  that  the  state  exceeded  its  just  power 
when  it  assumed  to  have  jurisdiction  over  any  other  relations  of  the 
citizen  than  those  of  person  and  property.  He  meant  this,  and  magis 
trates  and  ministers  understood  that  he  meant  it,  and  in  a  community 
where  no  man  was  a  citizen  except  he  was  a  church-member,  and  no 
man  was  a  church-member  except  with  the  minister's  permission,  such 
doctrine  was  dangerous  and  intolerable. 

But  he  was  not  to  be  moved.  Cotton  and  Hooker  went  to  Salem 
iiistriaiand  to  labor  with  him,  and  he  withstood  them.  The  court  had 

sentence.          J1jm  Up  £Qr  £rjal }la(J  Jlml   Up^  that  [^  for  a  public  polemical 

debate.  They  failed  to  convict  him  of  error,  as  he  failed  to  convict 
them  of  injustice.  He  was  sent  back  to  Salem  with  permission  to 
take  time  to  repent,  and  a  warning  to  prepare  for  sentence  at  the  next 
meeting  of  the  General  Court,  unless  ready  then  to  bring  forth  fruits 
meet  for  repentance. 

The  fruits  were  not  forthcoming.  He  was  stiff-necked  and  would 
not  bend,  and  sentence  of  banishment  was  pronounced  upon  him.  He 
"  hath  broached  and  divulged  "  said  the  act,  "  divers  new  and  danger 
ous  opinions  against  the  authority  of  magistrates  ;  as  also  writ  letters 
of  defamation,  both  of  the  magistrates  and  churches  here  ;  "  and  there 
fore  he  was  ordered  to  depart  out  of  that  jurisdiction  Avithin  six  weeks 
and  not  return  without  license  from  the  court.  To  this  sentence  there 
was  only  one  dissenting  voice.2 

1  Savage's  WinOirop.     Hubbard.     Mather's  Magnolia. 

2  Savage's  Winthrop. 


1635.]  BANISHMENT   OF   ROGER  WILLIAMS.  545 

There  was  more  than  one  dissenting  voice  however,  outside  of  the 
General  Court,  and  especially  in  Salem.  A  staunch  minority  stood  by 
the  persecuted  minister,  and  no  doubt  there  was  some  clamor  every 
where.  Perhaps  for  this  reason  notice  was  given  him  that  he  might 
remain  till  spring.  Williams  accepted  the  clemency  and  went  on 
preaching,  but  preached  precisely  as  he  had  done  before.  He  abated 
not  one  jot  of  his  dangerous  opinions  ;  gave  full  measure  of  his  doc 
trines  of  Christian  democracy.  When  the  church  was  closed  against 
him  by  the  timid  or  the  prudent,  he  called  together  in  his  own  house 
such  as  would  listen  to  him,  and  quietly  but  firmly  testified  to  the 
truth  as  it  was  in  him. 

Th'e  magistrates  were  exasperated  and  summoned  him  again  before 
them.  They  had  heard  he  intended  to  plant  a  colony  on  Narragansett 
Bay,  "  from  whence,"  says 
Winthrop,  "  the  infection 
would  easily  spread  into 
these  churches,  the  people 
being  many  of  them  much 
taken  with  the  apprehension 
of  his  godliness."  He  re 
fused  to  appear  again  be 
fore  the  court,  but  alleged 
ill  health  as  a  reason.  It 
was,  no  doubt,  a  good  and 
sufficient  excuse,  but  he 
may,  perhaps,  have  felt  also  Roger  wiiliams's  House  Salem- 

that  it  was  not  worth  while  to  be  tried   a  second  time  for  the  same 
offence.     At  any  rate  the  court  was  not  satisfied,  and  Captain  Under 
bill  was  sent  at  once  to  Salem  in  a  shallop  with  orders  to 
take  him  and  put  him  on  board  a  ship  about  to  sail  for  Eng-  arrest  of 
land.     When   Underbill  arrived  he  was  gone  ;  some  kind 
friends  had  given  him  information  of  the  proposed  arrest,  and  he  fled 
alone  out  into  the  night  and  the  wilderness. 

Winthrop  was  not,  this  year,  the  governor  of  Massachusetts,  and 
may  have  felt  that  release  from  official  duty  permitted  the  indulgence 
of  a  feeling  of  personal  friendship  and  sympathy.  In  a  letter  written 
thirty-five  years  afterward,  Williams  says,  "  that  ever  honored  gover 
nor,  Mr.  Winthrop,  privately  wrote  to  me  to  steer  my  course  to  the 
Narragansett  Bay  and  Indians  for  many  high  and  heavenly  and  public 
ends,  encouraging  me  from  the  freeness  of  place  from  any  English 
claims  or  patents."  l  To  Narragansett  Bay,  accordingly,  he  steered 

1  Letter  from  Roger  Williams  to  Major  Mason,  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.   Coll.,  vol.  i.,  Fourth 
Series.     The  letters  of  Williams  to  Winthrop  during  the  years  immediately  succeeding  his 


546 


NEW  ENGLAND   COLONIES. 


[CHAP.  XXL 


his  course,  "  though  in  winter  snow  which  I  feel  yet,"  he  adds,  paren 
thetically,  for  it  was  in  January. 

But  he  was  not  without  friends  in  the  wilderness  into  which  he 
threw  himself.  His  essay  on  the  rights  of  the  Indian  to  the  soil,  — 
which  had  been  construed  into  an  attack  upon  the  patent  and  upon 
The  flight  of  the  king,  and  made  matter  of  accusation  against  him  —  was 
Williams.  no£  mere}v  an  idle,  abstract  argument  with  him,  but  a  living 
truth.  His  belief  in  their  rights  was  wider  and  more  earnest  than 
the  belief  of  those  about  him,  though  they  were  not  disposed  to  be 
unjust  to  the  natives.  But  to  him  they  were  a  people  to  be  tenderly 
used  and  gently  led  out  of  the  darkness  of  Heathenism,  and  the  in 
tercourse  he  had  had  with  them,  while  living  in  Plymouth,  was  in 
fused  with  this  feeling,  and  had  led  to  the  most  kindly  relations. 


Roger  Williams  building  his   House. 

Massasoit,  the  old  friend  of  the  Pilgrims,  was  his  friend  also,  and 
with  him  the  wanderer  at  last  found  rest  at  Mount  Hope. 

The   chief  gave  him  land  on  the  Seekonk  River,  and  there  in  the 

banishment  (see  Rhode  Island  Hist.  Soc.,  vol.  i.,  Appendix,  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  vol.  ii., 
Third  Series,  and  vol.  vi.,  Fourth  Series)  show  the  existence  of  cordial  and  even  affection 
ate  relations  between  them. 


1633.]  SETTLEMENTS   ON   THE   CONNECTICUT.  547 

early  spring  he  began  to  build  himself  a  house.1  Here  five  persons 
from  Salem  joined  him,  but  they  all  soon  removed  to  the  other  side 
of  the  river  by  the  advice  of  Governor  Winslow,  of  Plymouth.  He 
wrote  to  Williams  that  he  and  his  party  were  within  the  bounds  of 
the  Plymouth  grant,  and  it  was  best  to  avoid  all  possibility  of  dispute 
by  moving  a  few  miles  farther  west.  The  advice  was  wise  and  for 
tunate.  Dropping  down  the  Seekonk  River  in  a  canoe,  and  round 
into  the  broad  harbor  below,  they  landed  at  the  foot  of  a  hill 

i  •         •     t  11  •*•      v  it        •  i         Williams 

whose  seeming  advantages  attracted  them.    In  following  the  settles  at 

Providence. 

advice  of  Winthrop  and  Winslow,  Williams  thought  he  was 
led  by  a  divine  guidance,  and  therefore,  and  —  to  use  his  own  words  — 
"  for  many  other  Providences  of  the  most  holy  and  only  wise,"  he 
called  the  place  Providence.     Here,  in  June,  1636,  the  exile  and  his 
five  companions  planted  the  seed  of  another  New  England  State. 

This,  however,  was  not  the  first  offshoot  from  the  parent  colonies 
that  had  taken  root  along  the  southern  shores  of  New  England.     As 
early  as  1631,  Wahginnacut,  a  Sagamore  from  "  the  river  Quonchta- 
cut,  which  lies  West  of  Naragancet,"  had  visited  Boston  and  offered 
the  Governor  inducements,  in  a  promised  tribute  of  corn  and  beaver- 
skins,  to  send  some  Englishmen  to  settle  in  his  country,  which  he  said 
was  fruitful.     The   proposition   was   refused,    as   the   chief,   it   was 
thought,  only  wanted  English  aid  in  a  war  in  which  he  was  then 
engaged  with  the  Pequots ;   but  the  suggestion  did  not  fall   SeUiements 
upon  deaf  ears.     The  Dutch  from  New  Netherland  had  al-  J3^^!y 
ready  penetrated  the  Connecticut  valley,  and  had  purchased  necticut- 
lands  of  the  Indians  on  the  banks  of  the  river.     In  1633,  the  Com 
missary,  Van   Curler,  had   begun  to  build  the  Fort  Good  Fort  GooA 
Hope,  — now  Hartford  — on  the  tract  thus  bought,  and  the  H°Pel>uilt- 
Dutch  West  India  Company  claimed  the  whole  valley  as  theirs,  by 
right  of  possession  and  purchase. 

Friendly  relations  had  been  established  between  the  Dutch  and  the 
Plymouth  people,  and  these  learned  from  the  former  something  of  the 
rich  trade  and  fertile  soil  they  had  found  on  the  Fresh  —  or  Connecti 
cut  —  River.  It  was  welcome  intelligence  to  the  Pilgrims,  whose 
trading-post  on  the  Penobscot  had  already  been  robbed  by  the  French, 
and  who,  probably,  had  little  hope  of  much  more  profitable  trade  in 
that  quarter.  Overtures  were  made  by  Bradford  and  Winslow  to 
Winthrop  to  anticipate  the  Dutch  in  their  proposed  occupation  at 
Fort  Good  Hope.  But  the  government  at  Boston  "  thought  not  fit  to 
meddle  with  it,"  as  the  neighborhood  of  a  large  body  of  Indians  and 

1  The  spot  is  now  known  as  "  Mnnton's  Cove,"  a  short  distance  above  a  bridge  in  a 
bend  of  the  river,  directly  eastward  of  Providence.  Gammell's  Life  of  Roger  Williams,  in 
Sparks's  American  Biography. 


548 


NEW  ENGLAND  COLONIES. 


[CHAP.  XXI. 


the  shallowness  of  the  river  made  it  a  poor  place  for  a  plantation. 

The  Plymouth  people  were  not  discouraged  by  this  refusal, 
on  "the  co™8  but  in  the  autumn  of  1633  sent  William  Holmes  round  by 

sea  to  the  Connecticut,  having  on  board  his  vessel  the  frame 
of  a  house  already  prepared  for  building.  The  Dutch  threatened  to 
fire  upon  them  as  they  passed  by  Fort  Good  Hope,  but  Holmes  showed 
his  commission  from  the  Governor  of  Plymouth,  and  insisted  that  he 
must  obey  orders,  and  going  on,  put  up  his  house  upon  the  site  of  the 


Site  of  Fort  Good   Hope. 

present  town  of  Windsor,  about  six  miles  above  the  Dutch  fort.1 
Governor  Van  Twiller  the  next  year  sent  troops  from  New  Amster 
dam —  who,  however,  were  not  employed  —  to  oust  the  intruders 
upon  the  territory  which,  he  claimed,  not  without  reason,  belonged  to 
the  West  India  Company.  But  the  sturdy  Pilgrims,  under  Holmes, 
held  their  own,  and  entered  into  successful  trade  with  the  Indians. 
This  firm  footing  on  the  Connecticut  was  made,  when  the  next 
spring  a  petition  was  presented  to  the  General  Assembly  of 
Massachusetts  Bay  from  the  people  of  Newtown,  asking  that 
they  might  be  permitted  "  to  look  out  either  for  enlargement 
necticut.  Qr  rem0val."  The  ministers  Hooker  and  Stone  were  at  the 
head  of  this  movement,  but,  though  the  petition  was  at  first  granted, 
when  the  intention  was  avowed  of  going  to  the  Connecticut,  it  met  with 
warm  opposition.  In  the  autumn  the  subject  again  came  up  for  discus 
sion  in  the  General  Court,  when  it  was  urged,  that  so  large  an  emi 
gration  would  be  a  great  injury  to  the  colony;  the  emigrants  them 
selves  would  be  exposed  to  great  dangers  both  from  the  Indians  and 

1  Trumbull's  History  of  Connecticut. 


The  New- 


remove  to 
the  Con- 


1635.]  EMIGRATION  TO   CONNECTICUT.  549 

the  Dutch ;  it  was  doubtful  if  the  king  would  assent  to  a  company 
settling  upon  lands  to  which  they  had  no  patent,  and  there  was  no 
good  reason  for  removing  so  far,  when  there  was  ample  room  within 
the  limits  of  the  Company's  patent  which  they  might  occupy.  On  the 
main  question  a  majority  of  the  deputies  from  the  towns  were  in  favor 
of  granting  permission  to  the  petitioners  to  remove  to  the  Connecti 
cut  ;  but  a  majority  of  the  assistants  voted  against  it. 

Thereupon  arose  an  important  conflict  as  to  the  rights  of  these  two 
classes  of  representatives  —  whether  the  assistants  who  rep-  Conflict  of 
resented  the  magistracy,  though  smaller  in  number,  should  ^nerajnthe 
not  outweigh  by  their  vote  the  larger  number  of  deputies  Court- 
who  represented  the  people.  Neither  party  was  disposed  to  yield,  and 
a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer  was  appointed  to  get  light  upon  the  sub 
ject,  aided  by  a  sermon  from  Mr.  John  Cotton.  The  result  was  at 
least  peace  for  the  present,  though  the  question  as  to  the  conflicting 
claim  of  assistants  and  representatives  remained  undetermined,  and 
the  Newtown  people,  before  Mr.  Cotton's  sermon  was  preached,  con 
sented  to  accept  an  enlargement  of  their  borders. 

The  wish  to  remove  to  the  rich  lands  of  the  Connecticut  Valley 
was  not  confined  to  the  church  at  Newtown.  Others  of 
Watertovvn,  Dorchester,  and  Roxbury,  were  equally  uneasy,  tothecon- 
and  as  no  permission  could  be  obtained  to  go  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  Massachusetts  patent,  a  good  many  resolved  to  go  with 
out.  A  few  men  from  Watertown  began  the  settlement  of  Wethers- 
field  in  the  winter  of  1635,  and  more  of  their  townsmen  followed  them 
in  the  spring;  others  went  from  Dorchester  and  settled  themselves 
about  the  Plymouth  people  at  Windsor  in  the  summer  of  that  year. 
In  November,  a  still  larger  party,  gathered  probably  from  various 
places,  started  for  the  new  country.  It  was  composed  of  whole  fami 
lies,  men,  women,  and  children,  and  they  took  with  them  their  horses, 
cattle,  and  swine.  It  was  a  perilous  journey  through  the  woods 
at  that  season,  and  winter  was  upon  them  before  it  was  over.  The 
river  was  frozen  by  the  middle  of  the  month,  and  the  vessels  which 
were  bringing  their  household  goods  and  provisions  were  unable  to 
get  to  them.  Two  of  these  were  wrecked  on  the  way.  The  emi 
grants  were  put  to  almost  the  extreme  of  suffering,  and  seventy  of 
them,  going  down  the  river,  in  the  hope  of  meeting  with  their  own 
vessels,  were  happily  rescued  by  another,  and  carried  back  to  Mas 
sachusetts,  miserable  and  repentant.  Those  who  went  to  Windsor 
were  complained  of  by  the  Plymouth  people  for  intruding  on  their 
lands. 

These  irregular  attempts  at  settlement,  more  or  less  successful,  were 
followed  by  one  which  laid  the  foundation  of  a  stable  colony.     In  the 


550 


NEW   ENGLAND   COLONIES. 


[CHAP.  XXI. 


thrJp,  the 


autumn  of  this  year,  John  Winthrop,  a  son  of  Governor  Winthrop  of 
Massachusetts,  came  out  from  England,  bringing  with  him  a 
commission  to  be  governor  of  Connecticut,  under  the  patent 
of  Lord  Say  and  Seal,  Lord  Brook  and  others,  which  cov 
ered  that  region  of  country.  He  brought  with  him  men,  ordnance, 

and  ammunition, 
and  had  orders  to 
erect  a  fort  at  the 

G~A/      ( t " ^4X*t~<a-A_^->  mouth  of  the  river. 
/  ^— '  Hearing  that  the 

Signature  of  Lord  Say  and  Seal.  Dutch      had       deS- 

patched  a  vessel  on  the  same  errand,  he  immediately  sent  a  small  ves 
sel  from  Boston  with  twenty  men  to  take  possession,  and  when  the 
Dutchman  arrived  a  battery  of  two  cannon  confronted  him,  which 
was  enough  to  prevent  his  landing.  When  the  Dutch  purchased  the 
country  three  years  before,  of  the  Indians,  they  had  affixed  to  a  tree 


Tearing   down  the   Dutch  Arms. 

at  Kievit's  Hook  the  arms  of  the  State's  General  in  token  of  posses 
sion.  The  Englishmen  contemptuously  tore  down  this  shield,  and 
carved  a  grinning  face  in  its  stead.1  The  place  was  named  Saybrook, 
in  honor  of  the  Lords  Say  and  Brook,  the  patentees,  a  strong  fort  was 
soon  built,  and  the  only  evidence  left  in  the  valley  of  the  presence  of 
the  Dutch  was  the  feeble  post  of  Fort  Good  Hope. 

1  Brodhoad's  History  of  New  York. 


163U.] 


THE   HOOKER   EMIGRATION. 


551 


Between  the  English  settlers  at  Hartford,  Wethersfield,  and  Windsor 
and  the  new  governor,  it  was  easy  to  come  to  an  amicable  Theiiooker 
arrangement.     And   others   soon   followed  from   Massachu-  emigration- 
setts.     The  Newtown  people,  notwithstanding  "  they  had  been  car 
ried  captive  after  the  triumphant  chariot  of  Mr.  Cotton's  rhetoric," 
and  had  accepted  the  offer  of 
more  lands  which  the  General 
Court  had   offered  them;  and 
notwithstanding  the  painful  ex 
perience  of  some  of  those  who 
had  sought  there  new  homes, 
still  longed  for  the  fresh  fields 
and    green    meadows    of    the 
Connecticut.     "  Two  such  em 
inent  stars,  such  as  were  Mr. 
Cotton  and  Mr.  Hooker,"  says 
Hubbard,  "  both  of  the  same 
magnitude,  though  of  differing 
influence,  could  not  well  con 
tinue  in  one  and  the  same  orb." 
It  is  not  impossible  that  there 
may  have  been  some  iealousy 

»  . 

between  two  such  eminent  men 
in  a  small  community,  where  there  was  no  influence  so  potent  as  that 
of  the  clergyman,  and  where  of  two  the  most  distinguished  only  one 
could  be  first.  Whether  Hooker  had  any  such  feeling  or  not,  the 
chief  reason  he  gave  for  desiring  a  removal  was  that  it  was  already 
too  crowded  in  Massachusetts,  and  that  the  policy  of  the  Company  in 
planting  settlements  so  near  each  other  was  a  mistake. 

The  accession  of  members  to  the  colony  during  the  year  1635,  no 
doubt  helped  to  strengthen  this  conviction,  for  there  came,  that  year, 
about  three  thousand  persons  from  England.  Some  must  go  farther 
into  the  interior,  and  the  Newtown  people  resumed  their  determina 
tion.  They  disposed  of  their  houses  and  lands  to  a  body  of  new 
comers,  and  prepared  for  removal. 

In  June,  1636,  the  whole  church  of  Newtown,  numbering  about  a 
hundred,  with  Hooker  and  Stone,  the  ministers,  at  their  head,  started 
on  their  journey.  They  were  about  ten  days  in  the  woods,  travelling 
in  that  time  something  less  than  a  hundred  miles.  They  drove  before 
them  a  hundred  and  sixty  cattle  ;  wagons  carried  the  old  and  feeble  ; 
these  and  tents  were  a  sufficient  shelter  at  night.  The  forest  was 
beautiful  with  the  abundant  flowers  of  June  and  with  the  tender  foliage 
of  the  young  summer  ;  the  woods  were  vocal  with  the  music  of  birds, 


John   Wmthrop,   the  younger. 


552  NEW   ENGLAND   COLONIES.  [CHAP.  XXI. 

in  that  month  always  in  clearest  and  fullest  song ;  the  rains  of  spring 
had  passed  ;  the  heats  of  the  later  season  had  not  come  ;  and  so,  with 
out  hardship,  almost  without  fatigue,  the  emigrants  traversed  the  wil 
derness,  as  happy,  in  their  ten  days'  journey,  as  a  modern  church-party 
that  picnics  for  a  clay  in  a  suburban  grove. 
Thev  left  nothing  behind  them  to  regret ; 
before  them  the  future  was  rosy  with  hope. 
The  one  touch  of  sombre  color,  which,  how 
ever,  took  nothing  of  in 
terest  and  even  of  ro- 


Hooker's   Emigration  to  Connecticut. 

mance  from  the  scene,  was  the  figure  of  Mrs.   Hooker,  who,  feeble 
from  illness,  was  carried  in  a  litter. 

Hartford  was  the  end  of  this  pleasant  journey  ;  then  so  named  in 

honor  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Stone,  who  was  a  native  of  Hartford  in  England. 

Wethersfield,  and   Windsor  also,  received  their  names  this 

Towns 

named  in       summer,  as  sufficient  numbers  followed  in  the  path  of  the 

Connecticut.  i  p  •    i      i       • 

Newtown  people,  to  make  them  worthy  ot  special  designa 
tion  ;  and  higher  up  the  river,  Pynchon,  one  of  the  earliest  of  the 
planters,  and  a  member  of  the  original  Council  in  London,  began 
a  settlement,  with  a  few  others,  which  soon  came  to  be  called  Spring 
field.  At  the  end  of  the  year  there  were  about  eight  hundred 
people  in  the  valley  of  the  Connecticut,  which,  though  governed  at 
first  by  commissioners  from  Massachusetts,  was  soon  an  established 
autonomy. 

But  this  swarming  of  the  hive  was  by  no  means  the  most  agitating 
experience  of  Massachusetts  during  this  period.     A  theological  dis- 


1634.] 


MRS.    HUTCHINSON. 


553 


pensation  was  visited  upon  it  which  shook  its  very  soui,  and  it  is  not 
impossible  that  the  interest  raised  by  this  was  so  absorbing  that  the 
authorities  saw  with  indifference,  or  did  not  notice  at  all,  that  the 
people  were  leaving  the  colony  with  as  little  hesitation  as  if  no  per 
mission  had  ever  been  asked,  and  refused  of  the  General  Court. 

In  1634  there  arrived  a  Mrs.  Ann  Hutchinson  from  Atford,  near 
Boston,  England.     With   her  came  her  husband,   a  rather 
insignificant  person,  and  her  brother-in-law,  the   Rev.  John  Mrs.  iiutch- 

___.        i        •    i  T    i  •*  i  i  i  inson. 

Wheelwright.  John  Cotton,  who  came  over  the  year  be 
fore,  was  her  favorite  among  all  the  ministers  in  England,  and  she 
seems  to  have  followed  him  to  this  country,  for  she  declared  that  no 
church  in  England  suited  her.  She  was  a  woman  of  superior  intelli 
gence,  bright,  witty,  good  at  a  fencing  match  of  tongues,  versed  in 
Scripture  and  theological  literature,  never  so  happy  as  when  descanting 
on  her  views.  Her  temper  was  resolute  ;  she  ruled  her  weak  husband, 
and  had  a  taste  for  ruling  ;  to  be  an  influential  centre  of  opinion  was 
her  ambition,  which  she  took  no  trouble  to  conceal.  Moreover  she  was 
skilful  in  sickness,  and  knew  how  to  treat  the  travails  and 

01  i  1-11  i  i        UTS.  Ilutch- 

trOllbleS  ot  her  sex.     She  soon  became  highly  popular,  only  mson-sad- 

Winthrop,  Wilson,  and  a  few  others  did  not  admire  her. 
John  Cotton,  of  course,  was  her  adherent.     So  also  was  Sir  Henry 
Vane,  who  was  governor  for  one  of  the  three  years  of  his  residence 
in  the  colony  and  during  the  contin 
uance  of  this  controversy ;  a  Puritan 
of   the    Puritans,    and   delighting    in 
theological  subtleties,  he  warmly  sup 
ported  Mrs.  Hutchinson.     The  views 
which    she    maintained    were   of    the 
kind  called  Antinomian  ;  that  is,  the 
Law  was  not  a  school-master  to  bring 
men  to  Christ,  the  Person  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  dwells  in  a  justified  person  and 
becomes  his  justification  ;  no  sanctifi- 
cation    can  help  to  testify  to  a  man 
that  he  is  justified,  or  of  him,  because 
it  may  be  assumed.     The  clergy  ob 
jected  that  as  the  Holy  Ghost  was  the 
Third  Person  of  the  Trinity  he  could 
not  be  indwelling.     But  she  declared  that  made  no  difficulty.     They 
disliked  the  distinction  which  she  and  her  brother-in-law  strenuously 
maintained  between  a  covenant  of  grace  and  a  covenant  of  works,  and 
she  offended  by  rallying  them  for  their  austerity. 

It  was  her  custom  to  hold  lectures  twice  a  week,  to  which  the 


Henry    Vane. 


554  NEW   ENGLAND   COLONIES.  [CHAP.  XXI. 

women  flocked,  from  eighty  to  one  hundred  attending  to  hear  her  re 
peat  from  memory  the  sermons  she  heard,  and  comment  upon 
mgon-gUiec-  them  with  piquancy.  She  had  Scripture  for  these  novel  gath 
erings  of  women,  for  Titus  says  that  the  aged  women  may 
teach  the  young  ones.  "  Come  along  with  me,"  says  a  writer  of  the 
period,  "  I  '11  bring  you  to  a  woman  that  preaches  better  Gospell  than 
any  of  your  black-coats  that  have  been  at  the  Ninnyversity,  a  woman 
of  an  other  kind  of  spirit,  who  hath  had  many  revelations  of  things  to 
come,  and  for  my  part  I  had  rather  hear  such  a  one  that  speaks  from 
the  meere  motion  of  the  spirit,  without  any  study  at  all,  then  any  of 
your  learned  Scollers,  although  they  may  be  fuller  of  Scripture." 

Only  four  or  five  members  of  the  Boston  Church  held  out  against 
her  ;  the  country  churches  were  mainly  opposed  to  her  teachings. 
The  feeling  began  to  grow  bitter  when  Mrs.  Hutchinson  obtrusively 
Her  success  l6^  *ne  meeting-house  whenever  Wilson  rose  to  speak, 
m  Boston.  Winthrop  and  Wilson  succeeded  with  difficulty  in  prevent 
ing  the  election  of  Wheelwright  to  an  associate  place  with  the  teacher 
and  pastor.  Their  success  was  provoking  and  increased  the  alienations 
among  old  friends  and  fellow-workers.  When  people  began  to  call 
each  other  hard  names,  to  brand  this  one  as  under  a  covenant  of  works, 
and  that  one  as  superior,  being  under  grace,  the  General  Court  took 
up  the  matter  as  becoming  dangerous  to  the  State.  Wheelwright  was 
pronounced  guilty  of  sedition  and  contempt  because  he  employed  the 
occasion  of  a  general  Fast  to  preach  a  discourse  in  which  he 

Interference          111  ,.     .          .  ,.  .   ^~, 

of  the  Gen-    called  persons  living  in  a  covenant  of  works  Anti-Chnsts  and 

eral  Court.  r 

stirred  up  the  people  against  them.  The  sentence  proved  so 
unpopular,  even  Winthrop  signing  a  petition  against  it,  that  the  court 
went  out  of  Boston  and  held  its  sittings  at  Newtown. 

In  May,  1637,  the  confusion  was  at  its  height.  At  the  General  Court 
a  quarrel  arose  upon  the  presentation  of  a  petition  from  Boston.  The 
Court  would  not  allow  it  to  be  read  till  after  the  usual  election  of 
magistrates.  Vane  resisted,  and  refused  with  his  supporters  to  take 
part;  but  Winthrop,  who  was  deputy,  persisted  in  voting,  and  the  elec 
tion  resulted  in  restoring  Winthrop  and  Dudley  to  power :  Endicott 
was  made  a  magistrate  for  life ;  but  all  the  adherents  of  Mrs.  Hutchin 
son  were  left  out.  The  excitement  in  Newtown  was  intense,  and 
people  came  into  violent  collision.  "  In  the  height  of  the  fray, 
Wilson  climbed  a  tree  and  made  a  speech,  the  meeting  being  held  in 
the  open  air."  1  Winthrop  was  coldly  received  in  Boston  and  subjected 
to  studied  insults. 

A  synod  of  ministers  and  magistrates  which  was  held  in  August  at 
Newtown,  and  condemned  the  opinions  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson  and  Wheel- 

1  Hutchinson. 


1634.] 


TRIAL   OF   MRS.    HUTCHINSON. 


555 


wright  did  not  pacify  dissension.     The  two  parties  were  irreconcilable. 
Now  the  General  Court,  began  to  deal  with  the  principal  offenders : 
some  were   disfranchised,    Wheelwright  was  banished,   and  Mrs  Hutch- 
eventually  went  to  the  Piscataqua.     Mrs.  Hutchinson  was  1>vh°e"iand 
brought  to  trial  for  not  discontinuing  her  meetings  at  the  ^"ugutto 
order  of  the  late  synod.     It  is  probable  that  the  agitations  tnal- 
of  the  years  had  affected  her  temper  and  somewhat  impaired  her  judg- 


Trial  of  Mrs.   Hutchinson. 


ment.    She  was  intemperate  enough  to  claim  to  be  inspired,  and  that 
it  had  been  revealed  to  her  that  she  would  come  to  New  England  to  be 


556  NEW  ENGLAND   COLONIES.  [CHAP.  XXI. 

persecuted,  but  that  God  would  ruin  the  colony  for  her  sake.  She  nar 
rowly  escaped  procuring  the  verification  of  her  own  prediction,  for  her 
quarrel  of  opinion  rent  the  State  when  it  divided  the  churches.  So 
intense  was  the  feeling  aroused  against  her,  that  it  was  believed  the 
Almighty  testified  His  disapprobation  of  her  heresies  by  producing 
monstrous  births  among  women  who  had  accepted  her  teachings ;  and 
even  she  herself  was  suspected  of  having  been  the  subject  of  such  a 
Her  banish-  dispensation.  The  Court  banished  her,  but  considerately  left 
ment.  jier  £o  s^av  ou{.  £jie  b^ter  winter  at  a  private  house.  Powder 

and  arms  were  carried  out  of  Boston,  and  the  principal  disaffected 
persons,  to  the  number  of  seventy-six,  were  summoned  to  surrender 
their  arms,  which  they  did.  Mrs.  Hutchinson  then  removed  to  Rhode 
Island,  and  afterward  to  New  York,  where,  as  has  already  been  told 
in  a  previous  chapter,  she  was  killed  some  years  after  by  the  Indians.1 

One  of  the  reasons  which  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  had 
given  for  not  acceding  to  the  requests  for  permission  to  remove  to  the 
Connecticut  Valley  was  the  danger  from  the  Indians.  It  was  no 
doubt  sincere,  and  it  certainly  was  not  without  reason.  The  Indians 
were  far  more  numerous  in  that  part  of  the  country  than  along  the 
sea-coast,  where  the  epidemic  of  years  before  had  more  than  decimated 
them.  They  saw  with  jealousy  and  fear  the  whites  intruding  upon 
their  territory.  With  the  Dutch  hitherto  they  had  kept  upon  good 
terms,  for  the  Dutch  were  traders  only,  and  not  settlers  upon  the 
Connecticut.  But  the  English  were  evidently  coming  with  another 
purpose  than  mere  traffic,  and  the  Indians  were  alarmed  accordingly. 

Aggressions  were  begun,  continued,  and  grew  more  frequent.  What 
Indian  hos-  the  Indians  did  we  know  ;  what  was  done  to  them  we  do  not 
tiiities.  know.  Sometimes  they  robbed  the  whites,  and  sometimes 
they  murdered  them  ;  plunder,  no  doubt,  was  often  their  object  ; 
quite  as  often,  perhaps,  revenge.  When,  in  1634,  they  went  on  board 
the  schooner  of  a  Captain  Stone,  somewhere  near  Fort  Good  Hope, 
and  murdered  all  hands,  it  was  probably  because  there  was  much  they 
wanted  to  steal  on  board  the  vessel,  just  in  from  the  West  Indies. 
But  when,  two  years  later,  Captain  Oldham  met  the  same  fate  at  their 
hands,  it  is  not^in  the  least  improbable  that  there  may  have  been 
some  provocation  which  led  to  the  deed. 

John  Oldham  had  been  in  New  England  from  the  first  settlement 

of  Plymouth.     After  his  ignominious  expulsion  from  that  colony,  we 

hear  of  his  apparent  restoration  to  favor  among;  that  people  ; 

Character  of        .    ,  .  .  .  •        TV/T    •  1 

John  old-      or  his  attempts  to  round  colonies  ot  his  own  in  Maine  ana 

Boston  harbor,  so  far,  at  least,  as  to  procure  patents  to  that 

end ;  of  his  trading  along  the  coast ;  of  his  disputing  with  the  Council 

i  See  p.  457. 


1636.] 


DEATH   OF   OLDHAM. 


557 


of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Company  their  title  to  the  lands  which 
they  held  under  the  hand  and  seal  of  the  king.  Restless,  energetic, 
always  engaged  in  some  enterprise,  he  certainly  was  ;  and  there  is  no 
evidence  that  there  was  anything  more  amiss  in  him  than  belongs 
almost  inevitably  to  a  man  of  violent  temper,  removed  in  a  great  de 
gree  from  the  restraints  of  civilization,  leading  a  life  of  adventure, 
associating  and  trading  with  the  Indians  till  he  had  acquired,  perhaps, 
as  such  men  are  apt  to  do,  something  of  the  habits  and  almost  the 
nature  of  an  Indian. 

In  1636  he  was  trading  in  a  vessel  of  his  own,  along  the  Connecti 
cut  River.  What  encounter  there  may  have  been  between  him  and 
the  Indians,  that  led  to  the  final  catastrophe,  is  not  known  —  whether 
his  vessel  was  boarded  by  them  merely  for  plunder,  or  whether  some 
aggression  on  his  part  provoked  retaliation.  But  off  Block  Island,  a 
Massachusetts  fisherman,  John  Gallop,  descried  the  vessel  drifting 


Recapture  of  Oldham's  Vesse 


helplessly  out  to  sea,  crowded  with  Indians  who  could  handle  neither 
helm  nor  sail.  Gallop,  who  had  only  one  man  and  two  boys  with  him, 
without  hesitation  attacked  the  vessel  and  then  boarded  her,  assault 
ing  the  Indians  with  such  weapons  as  he  had  at  hand.  It  must  have 
been  a  gallant  naval  battle,  for  the  brave  fisherman  and  his  brave 


558  NEW  ENGLAND   COLONIES.  [CHAP.  XXI. 

companions  drove  the  Indians  before  them,  some  diving  into  the  hold 
for  safety,  some  throwing  themselves  into  the  sea,  till  none  were  left 
upon  the  vessel  but  the  dying  and  the  dead.  Upon  the  deck  lay  the 
body  of  Oldham,  still  bleeding  from  recent  wounds  where  he  had 
fallen  with  his  crew  in  defence  of  his  vessel. 

This  death  of  Oldham  was  the  signal  for  war.     The  government  of 

Massachusetts  Bay,  the  people  who  had  already  come,  and 

of  the  erst    the  people  who  were  coming  into  the  Connecticut  valley,  saw 

Indian  War.  r  .  Y 

that  peace  with  the  requots  was  no  longer  to  be  purchased 
by  attempts  at  conciliation.  Immediate  measures  were  taken  to  punish 
this  outrage  ;  the  Indians  put  themselves  both  on  the  defensive  and 
the  offensive,  and  the  colonies  of  New  England  were  for  the  first  time 
engaged  in  serious  war. 


TABLE  OF  DATES. 


499.  Chinese  claim  to  American  discovery. 

860.  Iceland  discovered  by  Naddod,  the  Northman. 

985.  America  seen  by  Bjarni  Herjulfson. 

1000.  Leif,  son  of  Eric  the  Red,  discovers  America. 

1002.  Thorvald  the  Northman;  voyage  to  America. 

1004.  Thorvald's  second  voyage. 

1005.  Voyage  of  Thorstein  of  Ericsfiord. 

1007.  Expedition  of  Thorfinn  Karlsefne;  sails  for  America. 

Birth  of  Snorri,  first  European  child  born  on  this  continent. 

1011.  Colony  of  Freydis,  daughter  of  Eric  the  Red. 

1170.  Alleged  discovery  of  America  by  the  Welsh. 

1380.  Voyage  of  Nicolo  Zeno,  a  Venetian. 

1467.  Christopher  Columbus  sails  to  Iceland. 

1477.  Reputed  voyage  of  John  of  Rolno. 

1483.  Columbus  leaves  Portugal  for  Genoa. 

1484.  Alleged  voyage  of  Alonzo  Sanchez. 
1488.  Alleged  voyage  of  Cousin  of  Dieppe. 

1492.  First  voyage  of  Columbus  ;  Discovery  of  West  Indies. 

1497.  John  and  Sebastian  Cabot  discover  North  America. 

1498.  Third  voyage  of  Columbus  ;  he  discovers  the  continent  of  South  America. 
Second  voyage  of  Sebastian  Cabot. 

1499.  First  voyage  of  Amerigo  Vespucci. 

1500.  Gaspar  Cortereal  goes  to  Labrador. 

1501.  Second  voyage  of  Amerigo  Vespucci. 

1502.  Voyage  of  Miguel  Cortereal. 

1504.  Amerigo  Vespucci's  narrative  published. 

1506.  Death  of  Christopher  Columbus. 

John  Denys  of  Honfleur  explores  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence. 

1507.  America  named. 

1512.  Discovery  of  Florida  by  Juan  Ponce  de  Leon. 

1513.  Pacific  Ocean  discovered  by  Vasco  Nunez  de  Balboa. 

1516.  Voyage  of  Diego  Miruelo  to  Florida. 

1517.  Hernando  de  Cordova  visits  Florida. 

1518.  John  de  Grijalva  goes  to  Florida. 
Colony  of  Baron  de  Leri  on  Sable  Island. 

1519.  Francis  de  Garay  explores  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 

1520.  Lucas  Vasquez  De  Ayllon's  expedition  to  coasts  of  South  Carolina. 

1521.  Death  of  Juan  Ponce  de  Leon. 

1522.  A  ship  of  Magellan's  Expedition  sails  around  the  world. 


560  TABLE   OF   DATES. 

1524.  Council  of  Badajos  held  to  settle  claims  of  Spain  and  Portugal  to  America. 
First  French  expedition  to  America  under  Giovanni  da  Verrazano. 

1525.  Stephen  Gomez  sails  along  the  Atlantic  coast. 

1527.  Expedition  of  John  Rut  sails  from  England. 

1528.  Pamphilo  de  Narvaez  lands  in  Florida. 

1534.     Jacques  Cartier  of  France  sails  to  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence. 

1535.  Second  voyage  of  Jacques  Cartier. 

1536.  Voyage  from  London  commanded  by  Captain  Hore. 

1539.  Fernando  De  Soto  lands  in  Florida. 

1540.  Jean  Francois  de  la  lloque,  Seigneur  de  Roberval,   secures  a  patent  from 

Francis  I. 

1541.     Jacques  Cartier  sails  on  a  third  voyage. 
The  Mississippi  River  discovered. 

1542.  Death  of  Fernando  de  Soto. 
Voyage  of  Roberval. 

1543.  Return  of  De  Solo's  Expedition. 
1553.     Expedition  of  Sir  Hugh  Willoughby. 
1555.     Death  of  Jacques  Cartier. 

Huguenot  Colony  in  Brazil. 

1559.     Expedition  of  Don  Tristan  de  Luna. 
1562.     Admiral  Coligny's  first  colony  sent  to  Florida  under  John  Ribault. 

1564.     Second  Expedition  of  Coligny  under  Rene  de  Laudonniere. 

15G5.     Second  arrival  of  Ribault  in  Florida. 

Massacre  of  Ribault  and  his  companions  by  Pedro  Menendez. 
1565.      Founding  of  St.  Augustine. 

1568.     Attack  of  Dominique  de  Gourgues  on  the  Spanish  forts. 

1570.     Colony  of  Pedro  Menendez  landed  on  the  Potomac. 

1574.     Death  of  Pedro  Menendez. 

1576.  First  voyage  of  Martin  Frobisher  in  search  of  a  Northwest  passage;  dis 

covers  straits  since  called  by  his  name. 

1577.  Second  voyage  of  Martin  Frobisher. 
1578.     Third  voyage  of  Martin  Frobisher. 

Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert  receives  his  first  charter  for  American  dis 
covery. 

1579.     The  Union  of  Utrecht  formed. 

1581.     The  Republic  of  the  United  Netherlands  established. 
1583.     Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert  sails  on  his  American  voyage. 
1584.     Sir  Walter  Raleigh  receives  his  first  patent. 

Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  first  expedition  under  Amadas  and  Barlow. 

1585.  Raleigh's  second  expedition  under  Sir  Richard  Greenville. 
1585-6-7.     Voyages  of  John  Davis  in  search  of  a  Northwest  passage. 

1586.  Sir  Francis  Drake  attacks  St.  Augustine,  Florida. 

Sir  Francis  Drake  succors  Raleigh's  colonists  in  Virginia. 
1587.     Raleigh's  colony  under  Mr.  John  White. 

Birth  of  Virginia  Dare. 
1590.     White's  second  arrival  in  Virginia. 
1594.     Willem  Barentz  explores  Nova  Zambia. 

1598.     Marquis  de  la  Roche  secures  a  patent  from  Henry  IV.  of  France. 
1602.     Voyage  of  Samuel  Mace  to  Virginia. 

Captain  Bartholomew  Gosnold   begins  a  settlement  on  Elizabeth 
[Cuttyhunk]  Island. 


TABLE   OF  DATES.  561 

Dutch  East  India  Company  formed. 

1603.  First  voyage  of  Samuel  Champlain  to  America. 
Martin  Pring  explores  coast  of  Maine. 

Voyage  and  death  of  Bartholomew  Gilbert. 

1604.  French  patent  of  Acadia  granted  to  De  Monts. 

De  Monts  and  Champ  lain  establish  a  colony  in  the  present  limits 

of  Maine. 
1605.     Voyage  of  George  Wey mouth  to  the  coasts  of  Maine. 

1606.  Patent  granted  to  the  Virginia  Companies. 

First  permanent  colony  of  English  set  sail  for  America. 

1607.  First  permanent  settlement  of  Virginia  at  Jamestown. 
Colony  sent  to  Maine  by  Chief  Justice  Popham. 
Henry  Hudson  attempts  the  Northeast  passage. 

1608.  Founding  of  Quebec  by  Samuel  de  Champlain. 

1609.  Second  Charter  granted  to  the  Virginia  Company. 
The  Discovery  of  Lake  Champlain. 

Voyage   of  Henry  Hudson  to   America.      Discovery   of  the  river 
named  for  him. 

1610.  Arrival  of  Lord  de  la  Warre  in  Virginia. 

1611.  Sir  Thomas  Dale,  Governor  of  Virginia. 

1612.  Third  charter  granted  to  the  Virginia  Company. 
1C  13.     Settlement  of  Jesuits  on  Mount  Desert  Island. 

1613-14.     Captain  Samuel  Argall  breaks  up  the  French  settlements  in  Maine  and 

Acadia. 

1614.     The  New  Netherland  Company  receives  its  charter. 
Captain  John  Smith  explores  New  England. 

Expedition  sent  by  Ferdinando  Gorges  and  Earl  of  Southampton. 
1615.     Adriaen  Block  explores  Long  Island  Sound. 

1618.  Expiration  of  the  first  New  Netherland  charter. 
Ferdinando  Gorges  sends  Captain  Rocroft  to  New  England. 

1619.  First  cargo  of  slaves  brought  to  Jamestown. 

First  legislative  assembly  of  Virginia  meets  in  Jamestown. 

1620.  The  Pilgrims  sail  from  Delft  Haven 
New  charter  of  the  Plymouth  Company. 

1621.  The  Pilgrims  settle  at  Plymouth. 

Nova  Scotia  granted  to  Sir  William  Alexander. 
The  Dutch  "West  India  Company  incorporated. 
John  Peirce's  first  patent  from  the  Plymouth  Company. 

1622.     The  Dutch  West  India  Company  takes  formal  possession  of  New  Nether 
land. 

Weston's  colony  established  at  Wessagusset. 
The  Massacre  in  Virginia,  under  Opechancanough. 
1623.     The  Laconia  Grant  to  Gorges  and  Mason. 

Settlement  of  New  Hampshire  at  Portsmouth  and  Dover. 
Robert  Gorges  made  Governor-general  under  the  Plymouth  Company. 
John  Pierce' s  second  patent. 
The  Lyford  and  Oldham  difficulty  at  Plymouth. 
1625.     Permanent  settlements  in   Maine  begun  under  Aldworth   and  El- 

dridge. 
1629.     The  Massachusetts  Bay  Company  founded. 

Issue  of  the  Charter  of  Privileges  and  Exemptions  by  the  Dutch 
West  India  Company. 


562  TABLE   OF   DATES. 

Lord  Baltimore  visits  Jamestown. 
1630.     Settlement  of  Boston  and  neighboring  towns. 

John  Winthrop,  Governor  of  Massachusetts  Bay. 

Oldham  and  Vines  found  Biddeford  and  Saco  in  Maine. 

Kiliaen  van  Rensselaer  buys  Rensselaerswyck. 

Godyn  and  Blommaert  buy  land  on  the  Delaware.     Pauw  buys  Pavonia. 
1631.     Gorges  and  Mason  divide  the  Laconia  grant. 

New  Hampshire  named  by  Mason. 

Arrival  of  Roger  Williams  at  Boston. 

Swaanendael  founded  by  Heyes  for  De  Vries. 
1632.     Maryland  granted  to  Lord  Baltimore. 

Dutch  traders  on  the  Connecticut. 

1633.     The   Dutch  buy  lands  on   the   Schuylkill   and   on  the    Connecticut.     Fort 
Good  Hope  founded. 

Plymouth  trading-house  on  the  Connecticut. 

1634.  Settlement  of  Maryland. 

Charter  granted  to  the  Swedish  West  India  Company. 

1635.  Permanent    settlement   of  Connecticut  by   emigrants  from  Massa 

chusetts  Bay. 

The  Plymouth  Company  resign  their  Patent. 
Hostilities  between  Maryland  and  Virginia. 

1636.  Providence  founded  by  Roger  Williams. 

1637.     Climax  of  the  dissensions  excited  at  Boston  by  Anne  Hutchinson. 

Swedish  colonists  sail  from  Gottenburg  for  America. 
1638.     New  Netherland  opened  to  general  trade  and  settlement. 

The  Swedes  settle  in  Delaware  at  Minqua's  Kill  (near  Wilmington). 
1639.     De  Vries  colonizes  Staten  Island. 

1641.  The  Raritan  Indians  destroy  De  Vries's  settlement  on  Staten  Island. 
Hollaendare,  Governor  of  the  Swedes. 

1642.  Hostilities  between  the  Maryland  settlers  and  the  Susquehannah  Indians. 

1643.  Massacre  of  Indians  at  Pavonia  by  the  Dutch.     Indian  war. 
Murder  of  Anne  Hutchinson  by  the  Indians. 

John  Printz,  Governor  of  the  Swedish  Colony. 

1644.  Underbill's  expedition,  in  the  service  of  the  Dutch,  against  the  Connecti 

cut  Indians. 

Clayborne  and  Ingle's  insurrection  in  Maryland. 
1647.     Death  of  Leonard  Calvert. 


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